Japan journey began...

pert near sayonara

2011-07-27T13:29:00.000+09:00

it is so hard to believe that im really sitting here thinking about next week and next week does not involve sitting at this desk, being on this island, speaking japanese or even being in japan at all. and neither does the week after that or even the month after that. in fact, there is nothing in the near future that will have to do with japan at all and there wont be now in the foreseeable future at all. my heart is just torn. living here and doing this all consuming job has been one of the greatest challenges of my life, yet being here and doing this job has meant giving up many of the greatest loves in my life as well. though i have grown to love this place and these people as home, there is a voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me that moving on is the right thing right now. i am doing my best to listen to it in spite of the fact that every movement towards leaving feels heavy and sad, every goodbye feels surreal and every last meal, walk, ride, swim, run, sunset ect feels like i wish it would go on forever. i am doing my best to imprint these people, places and things into my memory but there is a fear that i will forget and that time will erase them. i know many will stay with me forever but i want to remember them all so badly, i want to remain in this little slice of heaven and let my mind marinate in its goodness.

but, alas, time is marching on and i am preparing to re-enter a world of love and comfort that i have not known in so long. so long now that i have nearly forgotten how good it can be and so i am anxious to see and feel it again as if for the first time, yet with a residual memory reminding me that it is so good and that i DO want that again. my mind and my body are warring right now with how to feel and what to do. i see the piles of things on the floor of my apartment asking to be delivered to Oregon or to new owners here, but moving them into boxes and bags and suitcases is not as easy as it should be. how do i say goodbye?

leaving is as scary for me now as leaving was for me two years ago. its so scary in fact that i know more and more than this IS what i am to do now in life and that i have made the right decision. when life is this scary there has to be amazing change and opportunity just beyond its haze of thunderclouds and driving rain. its just that getting through the clouds and the rain isnt easy. im doing my best to get my little boat to a safe harbor with many people i love in the near future and to zip my rain jacket up to my chin and dig my paddles in just a little bit harder. moving moving MOVING! trying to get the momentum going is just not so easy. i will do it though and continue to do my best in enjoying all of the moments as they come down the line. after all, there are no ordinary moments in life, remembering that is key to my success now.

onwards and upwards. here i come! making my way through the storm of sadness to find the rainbow of lovelies waiting on the other side. I WILL be seeing, hugging and loving you soon. ive just got to get these goodbye blues out of the way first.

2011-07-27T13:07:00.001+09:00

and here is another quick shot i stole from the entrance of the main garden. a LOT of work. a LOT of cool. cheers man. keep up the good work on making this little island a unique little slice of heaven.

2011-07-27T13:06:00.000+09:00

im leaving this picture small to retain some of its clarity, so sorry yet again about the photos here. this whole trip to this part of the island was unplanned but i was glad to be there anyhow.

this is hands down the coolest garden on this island. this guy (and i know its a guy, cause he showed up about two minutes after i took this picture to make sure i knew it was his. ohhhhhh!) has labored long and hard to collect all of these buoys from the sea and hang them carefully around his plants. i was in awe. this is just the first plot of his huge garden. there were three more like this just to the right of this one. cheers for creativity in surprising places.

egami tori

2011-07-27T13:02:00.001+09:00

for some reason i had never seen this tori on the island before. maybe because it is on the way ne side of the island that i dont get to much. that fact was made obvious while i was out there this day taking pics with my phone and every little old lady in the neighborhood slowly started coming out of her house to see me and ask me what i was doing there. it was pretty funny, but i was glad to talk with them and happy to know that they are still the curious old ladies that i have been meeting for the last two years here.

i cant believe that i am almost done with two years. where did they go?

Tanabata

2011-07-07T09:14:00.001+09:00

a little asian history, japanese culture lesson from me today. Tanabata is celebrated here by people making simple wishes on paper strips and hanging them from huge bamboo stalks, eessentially making a wish tree. i forgot how beautiful this holiday is and wanted to share it all with you. the kids at the elementary school had a ceremony this morning and gathered around the huge bamboo stalk that they had decorated and hung wishes on and sang. of course i stood there watching and crying knowing that it would be the last time i would see these kids performing this ceremony. what a wonderful moment i got to be a part of. what a wonderful time in our lives we have been able to share over the last two years. i didnt expect to feel this way when i left here, but deep down i knew i would. i have grown so attached to these kids and these teachers and this community. they have welcomed me and shared their beautiful lives and island with me, letting me make it my home too. i know that change keeps us moving in life and gives us strength and character, but why does it have to be so hard?

The following variation of the story of Tanabata is known in China and Japan: A young farmer named Mikeran discovered on his farm a robe which, unbeknownst to him, belonged to a goddess named Tanabata. Soon after, Tanabata visited Mikeran and asked if he had found it. He lied and told the goddess that he hadn't but would help with her search. Eventually the pair fell in love, were wed and had many children. However, one day Tanabata noticed a piece of cloth which had once belonged to her robe on the roof of Mikeran's hut. His lie discovered, Tanabata agreed to forgive him on the condition that he weave a thousand pairs of straw shoes, but until that time, she would leave him. Mikeran was unable to weave the shoes in his lifetime and thus never met Tanabata again. However, it is said that the pair meet once a year when the stars Altair and Vega intersect.
Tanabata song:

Sasa no ha sara-sara (笹の葉　さらさら)

Nokiba ni yureru (軒端にゆれる)

Ohoshi-sama kira-kira (お星様　キラキラ)

Kingin sunago (金銀砂子)

Translation:

The bamboo leaves rustle,

shaking away in the eaves.

The stars twinkle;

Gold and silver grains of sand

i will always keep the memory of these children as they were this morning; busy minds working over the present, quiet hearts contemplating the future and eyes that were asking the world for kindness. it is my Tanabata wish that they will find this kindness and so much more in life. it is my Tanabata wish that this beautiful country will rise from the hardships we have faced this year and find new ways to thrive. it is my Tanabata wish that safety and health will follow those i love and me as we journey on through this magical thing called life.

make a wish and see it through, you never know it might come true...

love to you all out there.

trash talk

2011-06-29T11:46:00.000+09:00

i cant get this tune out of my head. its a happy little jaunty tune that sounds like it should be coming from an ice cream truck down the street. i hear it every monday, wednesday and friday while im teaching. it seriously makes me nuts and today when i heard it, i lost track of what i was teaching the 4th graders sitting in front of me. it is that distracting. where does this singy little tune come from you ask? the garbage truck, thats where. it really is the damnest thing. a trash truck that plays happy tunes as it goes about its business of loading our waste into its belly. some days it makes me really smile to think that the japanese people thought to do such a thing and some days i just want that song out of my head. today is the latter.

im not even going to mention the fish truck...oh man.

by the way, this blog officially does not like my videos. i cant seem to get a single one to upload. im blogger challenged. know i have tried though and continue to try...

love and hugs

this one time...

2011-06-27T12:20:00.003+09:00

i want to tell you a little story about this one time when i made the right choice.

sooooo... the weather was forecast to be terrible, as in typhoon terrible. i had made plans to go with some friends from the islands to the mainland for a good-bye party with many of our mainland friends in an attempt to start the inevitable good-bye process. this would be a one last chance to see those who i had grown closest with on the mainland and have one last good hurrah with them. i made these plans prior to knowing about the typhoon. i had also made plans, or rather they had been made for me, to have my debut with my taiko team for the 20th anniversary of our team's existence. the good-bye party was saturday night and the taiko performance was sunday afternoon. this meant that i would have to catch an early boat sunday morning in order to make it back in time to perform, for the first time in front of people, with my taiko team. okay, i can do that, i can make it happen i thought to myself. no problem. this was before the typhoon forecast too.

after i head about the typhoon i started to doubt the possibility of all of this happening as i had planned. on one hand there was missing the good-byes to consider and on the other hand there was missing my debut with my team to consider. still on a third hand (i know there is no third hand in life, but just go with it okay!?) there was the typhoon to consider. we rarely have weather really pan out to what it is forecast to be, so when everyone around me is telling me a big typhoon is coming i tend to not really believe them. upon investigating it myself i found that they just might be right this time. just maybe.

i really, really, really wanted to go to say good-bye to my mainland friends. after all this was kind of the one last time where they would all be there together and a final chance to see many of them. i wanted to go if there was even a chance i could do it. i also really, really, really wanted to be able to perform with my team after all of the months (I've been practicing with them for 18 months now) of work and i didn't want to let them down as they were counting on me to be there. what does a girl do?

i woke up saturday morning early to check the weather and finally decided that it just seemed like it might be too big of a risk to get on a boat because having them canceled on sunday would be devastating for me and my team. i let my friends know i was going to stay put and sent them off with hugs for everyone i was going to miss. sniff sniff. then i had a little pity party for myself and tried to get excited and focused on what i wasn't going to miss.

as saturday wore on the typhoon slowly came on full force. the rain pounded down and the wind made being outside nearly impossible. it raged on, as i knew my friends were too on the mainland. i wished i was there with them, sent my love to them from here and tried to sleep. i woke up sunday morning to the island intercom man announcing "ohio gozaimasu. good guess work beth. all of the ferries for the day are canceled. no one is getting on or off this island for awhile." (okay, he didn't really say that, but he did tell us that all of the boats were being held.) a HUGE sigh of relief. if i had gone i wouldn't have been able to make it back for my performance. yesssssss!

sunday was fantastic. i spent most of the day preparing for the party with my team who thanked me again and again for staying and giving up my party on the mainland to perform with them. i couldn't believe how much they actually cared. they repeated this thanks in front of all of the guests later at the party after we had given a really fantastic performance. the kindness of these people really is just astounding some days.

so there it is. the time i made the right choice. not easy, but i just listened to my heart and the weather report and decided i should stay. what is not so easy right now is dealing with the choice i have made to go come august. I'm sure this will all work itself out, but for now I've got a lot of goodbyes to get on.

leaving you with some pics of my team practicing last week and from the pre-party last night. trying to get the video up of our performance last night. gambarro.

hope life is letting you know you're on the right track too, whatever track that it. and if you find you're not, take a chance and skip onto the next one.

love love

ps-sorry about the photos that arent right side round. i still cant get my computer at school to do as i ask. appologies for my lack of kanji skills.

happy solstice!

2011-06-21T11:20:00.000+09:00

...annnnnnnnd rainy season is officially upon us here in the goto islands. i was ready for it this year though. things are going off without a hitch and my rain boots and umbrellas were ready and waiting for the rain. here i am walking to an enkai (eating/drinking party) last saturday. the party was to celebrate the hard workin day we (parents of my students and my coworkers at the jr high and elementary school) had on saturday. we all took the day to present english lessons to anyone who wanted to come see them and then took the afternoon to play volleyball. it was indeed the strangest volleyball i have EVER played and no my team didnt win. i wish i could say i didnt care, but i kinda did. dang Nohara sensei holdin my team back! ;)

real pics of the day to come.

hope all is well out there in the world with any of you still reading. today is the first day of summer and the rain has indeed stopped for the day and the sun in shining down on us here in Goto. was a lovely thing the solstice is. makes me happy every year knowing the entire summer is before me and adventures await. currently i am working on living in the moment here and making all of the 40-some days that i have left living here in japan really count. i am going to miss this place more than i ever thought was possible, but i am also really looking forward to being back with things that at least used to be familiar. i leave my lovely island august 3rd and head for south korea to meet my friend becky (its been such a long time!) who is working there for a few days and then travel onto china to meet my fantastical cousin megan (really looking forward to being with family!!) who is living and working there from there i head back to my family's homeland of sweden for a week of exploring and music festivaling (can you say EXCITED!!>>!>!>!??). then from there i will be reunited with my best friend erin (no words can describe this excitement) in italy who i havent seen now since before i left to come to japan and from italy we will travel back to croatia where she will be working in august. from croatia i will head back to italy to do a little bit more solo exploring and then finally get on a plane back to japan and from japan i will finally at long last, at the end of the month return to portland. if you are reading and will be in portland august 30th, get your hugs ready cause im coming for you!!!!

okay, thats my run down for now. lots going on here, and today i have to keep my head in the teaching game as i still have lots more classes and fun with my students before i say goodbye. yesterday i had my LAST demonstration class with my 3rd grade elementary students and their homeroom teacher and apparently it went really well and people really enjoyed it. great! feels sooooooo nice to have all of that done now. there are a few more weeks of lessons and then tests here and the summer break will start for kids in japan. i have packing, good-byes (loads of them...yuuuuck), more packing, giving away, swimming, biking, eating and general enjoying to get done before i go so wish me luck.

hope to be seeing many of you in the coming months and weeks ahead. in the meantime take some moment and welcome the summer right today, or tomorrow, whatever day it is where ever you are.

sending lots of love from my little island to yours. namaste.

more taiko

2011-06-21T11:03:00.001+09:00

another shot of the taiko practice area. i konw its a small picture, but again it was taken with my keitai. this is our taiko sensei, masa-san on the right and a few of my team mates on the left. gambatte, ne?!!

taiko

2011-06-21T11:01:00.002+09:00

another not so great shot taken with my keitai, so appologies again, but this is the taiko studio i practice in every week. we have been hard at it lately especially because we are having a big show this weekend celebrating the 20th anniversary of the taiko team here in Naru. it will be my official debut and yes, i am very nervous. another great chance for me to stand out in front of a crowd. oh how i really hate performing in front of people! yikes.

horse face slight return

2011-06-21T10:59:00.000+09:00

appologies for the horrible photo, but it is proof enough that i am still alive, eh? was modeling the skirt i bought in thailand for my coworkers and managed to remember to send it to my blog. hi! this photo was taken in the staffroom at my high school by my lovely tea lady (the one who called me horse-face. remember her?) she is wonderful.

a slight return to real life

2011-05-26T14:03:00.000+09:00

humpf. i just deleted the post i was writing here because it was taking too long to figure out how to say what i wanted to say here, so instead of thinking about it too, too, toooooo much im just going to write, as i usually do here. mistakes and all. (this is a sign of a badddd writer, when you are lazy to edit yourself. right?!)

i have 46 days of work left on this little island in my little schools up on the hill. yup, thats right, i counted them. less than 50 days to do what i was sent here to do. have i done it? have the times when i have felt like ive done it really been to the best of my ability? is there something that i have missed and should have been doing more of while i was here? will what i have done here matter to anyone when i leave? do i really care if it matters to anyone when i leave? there are obviously loads of questions surrounding my thoughts about my time here now, but all i can do at this point is just work them out slowly as they come one at a time. one at a time. that is all that we are capable of after all, right? why should i try to figure out what all of my time here means in this instant, when i know that i will be figuring it out for the rest of my life bit by bit. (obviously my brain is kind of in over-drive right now.)

so, less than 50 days left of work and about two months of time here period. the end. i will most likely never return to this island. actually there is a good chance that in my lifetime this island will cease to exist. the population is just dwindling and there is nothing here for the people to do outside of fishing, and most of those jobs are held by older men who have maybe 20-30 years TOPS left of fishing. who will take their places? good question. i dont think anyone will. okay, so there is that. but beside the inevitable demise of this island what am i thinking about naru right now? how does it feel to know that this place i have called home for nearly two years now is going to be a speck in my rear view sooner than later...? gosh, it feels so complicated but i know that it should be easy. i should be saying that time here has been flush with learning experiences about myself, japan, the world and people in general, all things that i am interested in. but what i am really feeling is this insane need to stop time and take down notes and photos of every little thing that is coming and going in my world now and pin them down into some secret album for to to always return to. basically i want a portal to be able to come back to this moment in my life forever. i know its not going to happen, but i cant help but keep thinking how cool it would be if it did. how, in just two short months from now, will i be able to just get on the boat one final time and say good-bye? i dont know, but i will.

the feeling i have about leaving here feels a lot like the feeling i had before i left portland to come here. the nervous stomach at knowing that i am plunging into the land of unknowns; people wont understand the way i talk, the food will be weird, i will have to figure out where/what home is again, the people will be strange. i already know that the reverse culture shock will be heavy, but i also know that this time there is one big difference; there are people where im heading that love me. this big thing makes a big difference and that is why i know i will be okay. this is the one thought that is guiding me through these waves of doubt and sadness right now. it will be so hard to say good bye to all that my life is here, but it will be such a huge relief and release to be back with love surrounding me.

as the end is coming closer i am finding that there is something simple missing here that i have been missing all along, but i miss with great urgency now; a hug. thinking of being embraced, really well embraced by someone i know and care about, who knows how to give and receive hugs brings tears to my eyes. i honestly cant even let myself envision it anymore without loosing my composure. that is how bad i just wish there was someone to hug around. its been way too long without that little thing in my life and i NEED it back. i will never be able to understand how japanese people can go through life with so little physical affection or even interaction, but i do know that i will never take a hug for granted again, never.

i dont mean for this to sound sad and pathetic, in fact im kind of wondering if i should have written this at all because in reality i am fine. life is going on and im not dragging myself around or feeling like the world is about to end as it might sound from the last few paragraphs here, but there is just a void that needs to be filled and i know how to fill it, but just cant yet. i suppose what i am trying to say here is that if you are reading this, you should be boning up on your hugging skills for the next time we meet. i wont be letting go quickly and there will be great amounts of squeezing involved. so go ahead and practice a little right now, with the next person you see. most of you are in places where that isnt a weird thing and you can at least explain why you are doing what you are doing to them. do it for those of us in the world without that luxury.

i cant wait to luxuriate with you.

beth

shaking and earthquaking

2011-03-18T16:06:00.000+09:00

so, unless you have been living under a rock for the last week you know that the world is kind of falling in and on and apart in japan right now. north eastern japan to be specific. there was the huge earthquake followed by the huge tsunami. in the days that follwed there were hundreds of smaller earthquakes that shook the already unsteady ground up north and further destroyed things that were already unstable. avalanches, roads crumbling, houses/businesses/huge buildings falling prey to the earth shaking and enormous walls of water pounding against them, not to mention the nuclear reactors which are inducing fear here and abroad right now. i have seen more death and destruction here in the last few days than ever in my whole life. luckily, i have not had to witness one moment of it for real and have gotten all of my images via internet and tv news.

for those of you who check this still, if there are any, know that i am safe and seriously out of harms way as i sit here writing this. we have felt no earth shaking or had any destruction visit us here in nagasaki ken. i feel both lucky and overwhelmingly grateful to be where i am. i could have easily gotten another placement in this country and been up north where people who have my same position are still missing and unaccounted for.

i have a new found respect for life and this earth we tread so heavily on since the events of last friday here. life can change in an instant and when you come so close this sort of complete destruction happening all around you it makes one really step back and look at life again. how precious and even fleeting it can be. it gives one great inspiration to really live in the now and make sure you are loving, giving and sharing as one should. it has me doing a lot of celebrating life this week and i want to make sure that all of you who do keep up with me here know how much i do love you. you all are what has held me together here in moments that are strained here, you all are the people who make being alive today so wonderful for me.

please keep the people of japan in your thoughts and prayers. they will need your continued love and support to make it through this trying time. rebuilding efforts after devestation this extensive will go on for years to come and support through love and prayer will be needed throughout.

to those who are worried about me here, let me reassure you again that i am safe. if you need to check, look at a map of japan and look for hokaido, that is where the action was, then look for nagasaki, and then look to the left a bit off the coast and find the small chain of islands there and that is where i am, the goto islands. pretty much the safest place one could have possibly been when this happened. know also that should something change in the situation here that my job is not worth risking my life for and if i am in danger i will get somewhere safe before i am in an emergency situation.

okay, that is all for me for now. i have some beautiful weather outside to attend to and some living and loving to do.

sending huge, warm hugs to all of you today. love love love you each.

xoxoxo
beth

omiyagi; one more

2011-03-10T16:48:00.000+09:00

sweet little sweets

more omiyagi

2011-03-10T16:46:00.000+09:00

the details that go into these little cakes are just unreal. sorry these photos are not so wonderful as they were taken with my cell phone. but they measure about 1 inch square. sugoii!

omiyagi

2011-03-10T16:45:00.000+09:00

the beautiful box of tea candies i was given by the lunch lady at the elementary/jr high today. they are apparently really special tea cakes from kyoto and the very expensive kind. how lucky am i? it was a really random gift as i simply helped set up for a special lunch for the graduating jr high students today and the lunch lady's daughter happens to be one of those graduating students. im really not exactaly sure why she gifted me this ultra nice gift, but i do know that i am so grateful and happy to have gotten it anyhow. what a beautiful thing. ;)

graduation!

2011-03-01T15:47:00.000+09:00

high school graduation, a day most students spend their entire primary school time looking forward to, that is, unless you are a japanese high school student. the harsh realization that fun time is over has come and it is time to hunker down and get real with life. today was the end of that childhood for my kids and there were smiles and tears, though i saw more tears from students than smiles. mostly the teachers are smiling that they have successfully run another class of students through the wringer and gotten them out safely on the other side. hooray!

this is the number one most important ceremony of the year in high school and there is traditional dress to go with the formality of the ceremony as well. many in attendance were kimono clad. my kocho sensei (principal) who is always one to dress the part, wore her most beautiful kimono for the ceremony and let me take her picture this morning.

(i dont know why the pictures are doing this now. they were right side up when i uploaded them...darn it. sorry) anyway, this is tamaru kocho and she is one fantastic lady. one of two female kocho senseis in all of nagasaki ken. she will be leaving naru in a few weeks for another school (none of us know where yet, of course) and i will be so very sad to see her go. she can out do anyone around here and drink any man on this island under the table, ive seen it done. her kindness has really been a great blessing to me while i have been here. thank you tamaru kocho!

and next we have mr. iriguchi. he is technically my supervisor, a.k.a. the person i am supposed to go to for whatever i need around here. but he is also in charge of the senior students and spends around 12-14 hours a day at school helping them. so whatever i need usually takes a back seat, though he has really helped me out on some funny occasions too. he is a good guy and has been a breeze to work with, mostly because he lets me do whatever i want when we teach high school classes together. i like that. :) cheers to iriguchi sensei in his finery today!

and finally after the ceremony was through and the staff had unwound a bit from all of the preparations and taking down of the preparations ect, tamaru kocho pulled me into her office, literally. she asked me about what was on under my turtleneck and what i had on under my pants. ok, a little weird, but ive been here long enough now to know that this was leading somewhere fun. she was going to have her way with me for about ten minutes and dress me in her fancy kimono that she wore for the mornings ceremonies!!!! waku waku! so after much turning, tying, holding arms out and standing straight and tall she was done with me and i was the new tamaru!

fancy stuff, eh?! what a wonderful woman to do that for me and to lend me her beautiful kimono for awhile. she took me around the school showing off how nice she made me look all the while telling everyone how easy it was to get me in it and how it fits me perfectly and how my figure is so "porportioned" and i should be a kimono model and on and on. this made me more than a little uncomfortable, but i smiled away anyhow and knew she had good intentions. these pictures were taken in the staffroom and what you can see here are the other six or ten teachers standing opposite us taking our pictures. i cant remember the last time i felt like i was in front of the papparazzi. oh only in japan.

well thats it. ive changed back to my regular, boring suit clothes and now we are all getting ready to go celebrate the success of the day and the year. time to enkai! (that is japanese for eat and drink til you cant anymore, or something like that.) ;)

be well take care out there in this big world.

namaste

oh my goodness...

2011-02-26T11:31:00.000+09:00

well i have certainly not been a very loyal blogger have i? i am ashamed to say that i havent gotten much done on here in the last four months now...yikes. sorry to anyone (if there is anyone out there still!) who is checking this or hoping for some action. i didnt forget about this, but once some time had passed it seemed too much had happened to try and blog about it all, so i kept putting it off and putting it off...until today!

okay, where to start?! my last blog was in november last year, so happy new year and valentines day and presidents day and coming of age day and foundation day ect! i spent the loveliest of holidays finishing up 2010 in the incredible country of india. i went to volunteer in building some homes in a dailit village just north/east of chennai and then toured a bit of the country with my good friend Brittany, who lives on the next island over. we had an amazing, life changing time meeting new friends and learning so much about the world around us as we went. i know that india stole a bit of my heart and as overwhelming as it was in the start, after two weeks i had begun to stitch some of the indian ways and customs into my own and i know now i have to get back and explore some more. im so grateful to those of you out there that helped in funding our project to build homes. please know that those people expressed their gratitude and appreciation for your help every time they interacted with us. i will never forget the beautiful smiles of the chevuru people. (by the way this is a SUPER editied version of this trip. if any of you would like more details email me or buy me a beer when i get back. i could talk about this for days.)

so after ushering in the new year on a rooftop in gudivada with crazy indian fireworks, johnny walker and cake i came back to my island reality, naru.

winter in goto is not the hardest thing to do, not gunna lie. i suppose that after 25 nebraska winters though nothing short of the tundra is hard to deal with. this was the nicest winter of my life, even though they say that it was colder than last year. i didnt agree for some reason and found this winter to be really enjoyable. i say that it was enjoyable because technically japanese people believe that we are in spring already. they use the chinese lunar calender when it comes to seasons. spring a month early?, im fine with that!

temps dropped into the 40s around here and it actually did snow a few times, though it never stuck. perhaps the hardest thing about winter here is the fact that NONE of the buildings, including my apartment, have any insulation in them, so often they feel colder inside that it is outside. no one has central heat or air anywhere here either so the classrooms are really cold and the poor students just freeze to death during those cold months. poor things, they cant wear anything extra really that isnt their uniforms so the girls still have to wear their skirts and short socks and just sit in class saying "samui, samui, samui" over and over. (cold, cold, cold). it seriously prevents much from actually getting accomplished during those times and i think it would be in the japanese govts best interest to look into heating students classes during winter. but that is just me and what do i know...

okay, so february has been a big month of making new plans. i had to decide at the beginning of the month whether i would be staying again or not. i was pretty certain of my decesion before i left for india, but knew after i came back that i would for sure be leaving japan this year. i do love this place, but living on a little island with little or not refuge or real communication with people on a daily basis is kind of taking its toll on me and i think that leaving after two years is my best choice. i feel good about my choice, though every time i think about leaving this place just six short months from now i feel a bit sad about it. well, i knew i wouldnt be here forever, and change is inevitable, so change i must. i am doing my very best to enjoy my daily walks to school, the crazy beautiful sunsets, the hawks constantly overhead and my newly discovered like for running along the coast lines here. this little island is really magicl and i feel so lucky to have had the chance to discover it for the last year or so. i will do my best to keep discovering for awhile longer now!

so now february is nearly over here and i am gearing up for a change of staff and students (well, a few at least) in naru. the school year here ends in march and the high school kids will graduate on the 1st with the others finishing around the 23rd. they will then take a few weeks off and resume in april at some date yet to be decided. in those two weeks off a bunch of teachers here will be shuffled around. when you are a teacher in japan you work for the govt and they get to choose where you will work every year. usually they let a teacher stay in one place for 3-5 years and then give you a new assignment. you get little or no say in where this new place will be and when your order comes to move you go, no questions asked. if you dont go you can kiss your job or any chance of teaching in japan again goodbye, forever. so needless to say, during the month of march teachers around here are all pretty jumpy and anxious to hear if they need to start packing boxes or if they will stay on again. its hard to say whether people love their assignments in naru or hate them. if they are young and want to marry the pool to choose from gets teeny tiny here, well really almost non existant and so they have to figure some thing else out for a few years. if they have families many of the families will stay on the mainland to go to better schools and spouses can work. there is little or no work on this island if you arent a govt worker or a fisherperson. so, this time is quickly approaching and i am kind of looking forward to who may be here in the next month but kinda getting ready to miss some people that will almost surely be leaving this year too. its strange for me, but they are all used to this for sure. they all gasp when i tell them about teaching in america and how you can easily stay at the same teaching post for your entire career and teachers often do. just proves even further that they are all really always concerned about the great wa here. making sure they all suffer the same is keeping things fair i guess.

okay, so graduation is coming up and im going to try and snap some shots to share (gasp!) on here. i got a new camera from santa because he decided that my old one deserved to go to someone staying at one of the hotels where i stayed in india. i understand santa, you just wanted me to have a better one, right?! great.

oh and sakura matsuri is right around the corner too. that is the cherry blossom festivals around here and i am armed and ready this year!

hope any of you out there still getting this are all well and happy and enjoying the last of the frosty time in 2011. spring is on the way!

namaste

Part 2: Okinawa, Iriomote Island

2010-11-16T19:49:00.000+09:00

so to catch you and I both up, i am finishing off the photos here from when i visited okinawa awhile back with my friends from Goto (the islands where I live.) we left off in the beautiful garden in Naha, on the main island.

Naha is quite a touristy place and so there is a the gammet of people bouncing around the city and quite an array of things to see and do as well. none of the folks i traveled with or i really call that kind of city our cup of tea when it comes to traveling, but we had to spend a day there in order to move onto the next island so we made the most of it!

a glorious little shop selling every kind of okinawan souvineir you could want. this is japanese pink explosion.

just your average liquor store in okinawa...

unless you count the fact that they are selling barrels of snake shou chou. thats right folks, a real snake inside the most obnoxious liquor that you have ever tried. this is a big seller here and the popular thing to drink if you are in okinawa and looking for a real traditional experience. i am happy to say that i avoided it entirely. it is really expensive (about 100 or so US dollars for a jug of this) and it has a dead snake in it. oh, and my dad always told me to stay away from snake oil. thanks dad.

main tourist street in Naha. touristy, eh?

another wall of snake spirits in another liquor store.

here we have one excellent example of japanese weirdness. this is my friend brittany beside an ad for chocolate in the ishigaki airport. right?!?

and here is a double rainbow welcoming us to iromote island. this was the beginning of a lot of beautiful things to come.

iriomote island main harbor. was really fantastic, but really made me think of how lucky i am to live in goto, where life is strangely similar to this.

the manegrove forest in iriomote that visitors frequent. you can ride a ways back into it and then hike up to this gorgeous waterfall. most people were not prepared for the hike and it was hilarious to see them hiking out in high heels and such.

this is the water past the falls...on our way there.

one of the small falls on the way to the main event!

the falls look tiny in this picture, but when we finally got to them they were fantastical!

some kanjis past visitors have carved into the stones you must climb over in order to get to the falls.

this is me and robin chan.

there are gaijin swimming in that water there!!!! lets get in and freak out all of the japanese people!

okay...more in the next post!

biru=beer

2010-11-16T19:17:00.000+09:00

i know i owe all of you out there who read this thing about fifteen posts and i will get to them soon. it has been an uber busy couple of weeks, er, month here and i am just getting caught up with everything myself. for the time being though, here was the high light of my day.

teaching 3rd graders this afternoon. the homeroom teacher (who i teach the class with and also who plans the class, i just come in as an assistant) tells me and the kids that we will sing a new song today. great. no problem. these songs are super easy to learn and i usually know them or can pull them from some deep memory store from childhood. so she starts the CD and it is a super easy song as i thought. basically they are saying words of foods in japanese and then asking for the kids to try and give the english word, but doing this all in a sort of musical way, more like a call and response form. the song starts easily with fruits and foods like ham and bacon. really essential if you are learning english as an 8 year old child in japan. i mean who knows when you will be having breakfast with some foreigners next and they will want to know your favorite breakfast meat? who knows??, it really is just smarter to be prepared. :) so next comes curry and some other various japanese favorites, followed by my favorite, biru. thats right folks, that translates in english to beer. really, really important for the youth on this island to know this word. really. so glad that we could include it in our english lesson this afternoon.

i couldnt stop laughing on the inside or thinking about how strange this all was. not only was this a song that the teacher has chosen, but a CD that some japanese company had made and then the japanese govt had chosen that specific CD to include in the elementary ciriculum here. the kids and the teacher didnt even flinch or think it was weird. i was the only one. still am.

japan is so strange some days. i love it here. :)

hope you are loving life where you are today as well.

catchin up soon,
beth

Okinawa Part 1: Castle and garden on Naha

2010-10-07T10:50:00.000+09:00

After spending most of my time on the Goto islands and in Nagasaki-ken i really, really wanted to get out and explore more of Japan this year. Poof! My wish was granted and my first big "seeing Japan" trip was fantastic! I got to explore the many fabulous island of Okinawa with some great friends and just enjoy the leisure of travel.

We headed for the islands on a Saturday morning and traveled most of the day; Fukue (my neighboring island, which HAS an airport!) to Fukuoka, and Fukuoka to Naha on Okinawa island. We stayed the evening in Naha at this fantastic little hostel and spent the next day exploring the main island and enjoying the slow life of another island.

Our first big sight seeing adventure was the Shuri castle ruins and former Ryukyu islands emperors home. These grounds were very spread out and contained many old buildings and relics which helped us visitors to take a peek into what life might have been like back then. This woman (yes, we think this is a woman after much debate though) was exhibiting a traditional Okinawan folk dance for the crowd of tourists. It is quite possibly the s l o w e s t dance i have ever witnessed. Painful and beautiful at the same time and she was accompanied by traditional shamisen players. A nice peek into the past.

The castle itself was home to 10 or so emperors of the Okinawan islands, which were back then their own little entity and not technically part of Japan. So while these people are proud Japanese people, their history is rich and separate from those of mainland people. Red was prevelent in the decor and since then has kind of taken on a regal quality in my mind. Everything at this site was painted and draped in red.

This is the outside of the main house of the emperor. The area where these folks are standing is where armies used to gather to get orders from the emperor himself.

Living quarters and spaces where the emperor would recieve guests.

we took the usual route, so as to not upset all of the castle guides who stood watching people file through. this was a tight operation and something like 100,000 people come through this castle each year. pretty awesome and pretty over the top.

the white girl is with me! surprise!

this is the emperor's throne. Quite ornate seating and nice and glossy, just like the Japanese people like things!

Kanji above the throne. Im really sorry, I dont know what this says. Make something up that sounds good to you!

this is a model built to show what the area once looked like when armies gathered in the main courtyard. (picture of the outside of the building above)

So after our sojourn in the ancient life of royalty we decided to get outside for awhile and see what other tresures Naha held. We found this garden (Japanese style, of course) and got lost in its pleasures for awhile. It was the perfect was to end a zenful day and enjoy sunset. The little windows here were so fantastic and the details everywhere were just stunning.

i will just let the scenery do the talking for a minute now. this was really such a lovely way to spend some time and a great way to connect with Japan and its natural beauty. these are for mr. bird and my mom. you were both there with me while I wandered through here.

I followed this little old man through the garden for quite awhile. He stopped to talk to me about the mosquitos and to remind me that the garden would close in twenty minutes. I think he liked me, and I know I liked him.

ohio again...

2010-10-05T13:13:00.000+09:00

Ohio!

just had to capture the sun over the mountains to the east while i was walking to work this morning. gotta say that i do love this place a little more each day.

...and then there were two

2010-09-17T10:47:00.000+09:00

so it turns out that there was possibly a nest near the school of these little ones, because my colleague (kariminie sensei) caught another one while we were out watching sports day practice on the baseball field. he surprised me with it when we came in for a quick water/air conditioning break. too cool. kariminie sensei is one of my favorites. he is also my neighbor and reminds me quite a bit of my father, and i have told him this, so he likes to call me his daughter and takes great care now to see that i am well and happy. he was all for me taking these two back into the wild. he gets it and i like him.

by the way, these two are roaming free in the mountains of naru as we speak. just another day in japan.

always interesting

2010-09-16T10:53:00.000+09:00

this is my new friend. his/her japanese name is yamakagashi. i have no idea what this means, but something about living in the mountains for sure. it was roaming around in the hallway near the bathrooms but still inside so it caused quite a stir. i heard a scream outside and then most of the staff went running out to see what it was. i came when i realized that they were all inspecting something. this snake was that something and the poor thing was trapped between a footlocker and a wall. with help from a few teachers who werent afraid of it we got it into this PET bottle and now it is sitting on my desk awaiting its return to the wild after school. we will take a bike ride to the other side of the island at miyanamori park and i'll let it be on its way, but out of the way of people who are eager to kill it. this is a baby and it is a poisonous snake, so i see why they are eager to be rid of it from the school area, but it has a reason for being here just as we do, so i want to let it get back to whatever it should be doing.

you just never know what surprises are going to arise during your days on this island. it seems that one must always be ready for anything that could happen. it is times like this that i wonder what the people on the mainland would do in this sort of situation, or rather, if something like this would ever happen to them at all?

im so glad to be here with this snake on my desk bringing all of the teachers in the building by to see it when it is crawling up the sides of the bottle.

on my way to okinawa this weekend for a week of vacation. the weather report at this minute is looking like we may be having a typhoon while we are there. this could be very interesting and proves to be an adventure for sure. photos and stories to follow.

hope all of you are living and dreaming happily and in good health.

beth

simple is best

2010-09-01T12:42:00.000+09:00

i have a new favorite bike route that i have been taking for the last few nights. its getting dark here now fairly early, around 7:30, which is just about the time that i usually head out for my ride.

the way is easy enough, and just in case you ever make it here i will let you in on how to find heaven on a bicycle here:

take the main road out to the west side of the island. locate the big dipper above the mountains and follow it until it disappears behind them. turn around. follow the sea wall and the lights reflecting in water below back to the place where the main road splits to the back road. you're home.

with so much else to make life crazy i am so grateful for moments of simplicity which make perfect sense. moments that force me to relax and enjoy the stillness that life can bring when we dare to breath deep and listen for it.

namaste friends

horse head

2010-08-25T10:53:00.000+09:00

i think that i may have mentioned in a previous post at some point the way in which japanese people can be kind of, well, rude. except it isnt rude at all, and they certainly dont see it as such, but it is just for them stating the obvious i guess. i am still getting used to this and upon being the recipient of this honesty it still surprises me and makes me laugh every time.

it happened again about five minutes ago.

tanaka-san came into the staff room and sang my name out, as only she does "bess-chan! o-bento!". this means that she wants me to come to the office and order my lunch. i grabbed a 500 yen coin from my desk and followed her into the office. this was our first meeting of the day and so naturaly she checked out my attire for the day and asked me how i was feeling. fine fine fine, all was good i answered as i scribbled my best kanji on the paper and ordered my bento. i looked up at her and smiled and all of a sudden she said "horse head" to me and motioned to my head. i thought about it for a second and then realized that she was referring to my hair, which is piled up on top of my head with excessive heighth today. no, i didnt do this on purpose, and if you know me you know that i never really give my hair-do for the day much thought or effort, in fact todays hair-do was done as i was walking to the bathroom to brush my teeth i think. i didnt use the mirror or redo it after checking　it out. it was out of my face and out of my way, whatever. she said it again and this time i laughed and tried to explain that i wasnt going for the horse head look but just didnt care. she seemed to like it and so i smiled and tried to accept this strangness as a compliment of sorts. a good laugh if nothing else, right?

this is kind of the way here. i have had more people point out red eyes from allergies and such, bags under my eyes after restless nights of no or little sleep, my tan arms (GASP!!!!) and other minor physical things about me which seem out of sorts to them without even considering it would be rude to mention to me as it would be back home. can you imagine walking up to your ONLY foreign co-worker and saying to them "wow look at how dark the circles under your eyes are!" or "you have a horse head today!". seriously cracks me up and i dont even know how to respond except to laugh now. just their way.

**as a side note here, i will mention upon having recently returned from the US and experiencing culture shock there, that japanese people on the whole are VERY polite when it comes to daily everythings, MUCH more so than anywhere i have ever been in the states. their politeness and consideration for everyone here is ingrained in them and has been and remains a core of their culture here for centuries. how on earth did these little "rude" comments slip by? i have no idea, but perhaps that is what makes them even funnier to me now.

horse head. i will laugh about this one awhile.

ohio gozimasu!

2010-08-23T08:46:00.001+09:00

this is the friendly little guy who brittney and i woke up to waiting right outside her apartment for us on sunday morning. i accidentaly walked through its web but it was okay i promise! about the size of my palm and so beautiful. had to share it with you all, (wink wink mama mel!)

and say good morning!

Obon!

2010-08-20T15:35:00.000+09:00

we have only just finished here in japan celebrating the week of old (deceased) family members returning. the only holiday to which i can compare it to it la dia de los muertos which they celebrate in mexico and central america (?) where they honor the dead and invite their spirits back for the weekend and then send them back to the other side again when the weekend has finished. on the last day of Obon it is a big no-no to be in or on the water at all, since they see this as kind of messing with the way that their loved ones will need to take, another words you are causing a traffic jam on their way back. i, of course went swimming that day. Obon is quite a big deal in Japan and most of my co-workers actually took time off of work and went home to be with their families. this is a huge shock considering they work as they do for most every other week of the year, save for a few days during new year. this is one time of the year though where it is extremely important to them to be together and at the origin of the family and so the island was teaming with new people (family members who live on the mainland) and it was fun to watch them stare at me as i stared at them. but anyhow we had a wonderful time celebrating here on the island and did so in the traditional ways of the naru people.

in the morning on the 14th, which was a saturday, most of the people on the island gathered at one of the boat harbors for the annual Obon boat races. there were many many teams participating and though i am not sure if there was an overall winner, most people who attended were a part of the action at some point or another. i was asked to be a substitute and nervously accepted, but at the last minute the woman showed up and i got to step down. big relief! here are some pics of the races.

as you can see, this was more of a fun race than a serious one, and on the first day of Obon it is okay to get into the water and be in a boat. i think (as i understood it) that this signifies them going out to greet their loved ones and welcome them back home.

later on this saturday there was to be a matsuri in the town center, or what we use as a town center now, the old middle school recreation area. if you were on the island that night, you were at the party. it was great fun for me to be a part of it and i got to wear my yukata that i recieved as a gift from my friend Mari last year. yukata is a light cotton kimono that is worn in the summer only and is appropriate for wear to any evening sort of activity or gathering when the weather is warm. and though they were designed for when the weather is hot to keep you cool, i must say i was pretty warm in mine as the obi (waist line tie) is wrapped around you many many times and there are things (sorry i have no idea what they are called) inserted inside the obi to keep it flat on you. Mari's grandmother and her grandmother's neighbor helped me put mine on as there is a very specific way to wear it and fold it on yourself and on and on. they were quick and it took them only about 45 minutes to get us both dressed.

off we went to matsuri after we were finally dressed but first i snapped a few shots of Mari's grandmother's house and the shrines that were set up there and various other non-western looking things in the house, like the entryway with the shoe cubbies, which EVERY japanese house has. the shrine with the edibles is a Buddhist shrine and the one up high with a bell is a Shinto shrine. most people here incorporate both religions into their lives in many ways no problem. the food on the shrine is of course the favorites of those who have passed and i did ask if after Obon if it is eaten or not and Mari said yes. oh and the peacoak pictured below is made entirely of beads and safety pins. ingenious.

once we were at the festival there were a bunch of foods to eat and so many new things going on that were keeping me happy and occupied. all of my students were there and really got excited seeing me in my yukata and i got excited seeing them in theirs and also just seeing them in street clothes. i rarely, if ever have seen most of them in anything besides their school uniforms. it sounds weird but when that is what their life consists of that is how they are dressed. thank goodness for one weekend of a break, huh?

some of my high school students and I.

some of my elementary students playing some kind of carnival game. i dont understand it at all.

prizes at this game were masks among other things.

another fun carnival prize, the huge blow up minnie mouse stick! exciting!!!

some of my jr high 3rd year girls. (thats high school freshmen to us)

my friend yoshinao is there on the right with his bow on. no shame here, none at all.

and this is something that perplexes me every time i see it; marijuana leaves on EVERYTHING, even though it is classified as HIGHLY illegal here and you can be sent to jail for quite awhile for having it. i dont get it.

some street meat, or carnival cuisine if you will. i think it was bacon and beef and chicken, nothing weird.

me with my light-up bow on with a few jr high 3rd graders. no shame here either. hey, when in rome...

and this is me with my favorite high school teacher. he is a really great guy with a really cute family and he is always helping me out with things at work, as he sits next to me and is one of the english teachers, so i guess he kinda has to. ;) but he also is kind enough to include me in all of the soccer games that ONLY my male coworkers play, and me i guess. he is nakagawa sensei and was pictured a few entries back in a bad photo taken on my keitai sleeping at the karaoke bar. remember him? here he is with his son Ao and me with my bow again. rockin.

and after this awesome matsuri i trotted off with Mari to Yoshinao's house to watch a pretty great fireworks display that they were doing right out in the main bay. all of the fireworks were launched from boats (proper portland style!) and some of them purposely really low. (i was only told this when i said that there had been a misfire and Mari and Yoshi corrected me.) a wonderful day on the island and loads of strange, new fun learning and enjoying with my island people.

i did a bunch of thinking about and remembering my family who have passed on during this time as well. a nice sentiment that the Japanese do this each year i think. i was glad to be a part of it and will always remember this special holiday when august comes.

thinking of all of you who i love today and holding you in my heart. thanks for being with me in mind and spirit as i adventure in my little corner of the world. tons of love to you in yours.

back with the small people

2010-08-17T16:08:00.000+09:00

by small i do not refer to anything except the size of all things japanese and it is not necessarily a bad thing i have discovered. in fact, i have come to love the smaller size of things here and actually looked forward towards the end of my american journey to coming home to things that made sense porportionaly and not having to leave most of whatever i was served on my plate or feeling like everything was too large and too loud. home is nice, i am so glad to be back on my little island in the sun now.

i returned on a saturday morning after leaving the states on thursday afternoon to find my new scooter (thanks kelly!) waiting for me at the port. after some coaxing i got her started and was on a short ride back to my apartment. what a feeling! you will be getting updates on how our relationship is evolving just as soon as all of the paperwork is squared away with her.

my bags came in the afternoon (again, i sent them via baggage service. about 20 bucks for them to ship them from the fukuoka airport to my doorstep instead of me lugging two HUGE (american huge) suitcases across town in fukuoka and then into and on the ferry with me and then home once i reached the island. i love baggage service!) and i hurriedly unpacked them and got clothes and gifts organized when my friend yoshi called me and told me that there was to be a matsuri (summer festival) that evening and that i should meet him at 5 o'clock. OK! i was anxious to get back into the swing of things so off i went and helped a bit with set up but mostly just enjoyed all that these festivals have to offer. loads of my students were on hand selling the food/drinks and offering their help to all of the young and old in attendence. it was a special festival that was set up for the old folks on the island at one of the retirement homes. they were all tickled pink to have so many of us there and being able to celebrate the summer season with family and friends. my taiko team performed (sans me, which i was soo happy about after missing a month of practices!) along with some other singing and dancing from all ages there. it was generally a great time and everyone really seemed to be letting their hair down, as much as they do. ;)

this man was good enough to bring his tako-yaki van to the festival. he served them up hot and delicious right from the back of the thing. tako-yaki is a great street sort of food here and is like little balls of pancake batter with bits of octopus inside. yum!

traditional dancing to a very old matsuri tune

it never fails, there is always a place at every event, no matter how small, for the "important" people to sit. these are the guys and i have no idea how they are so important, but they are. the good part is, they all semm to like me, or at least the novelty of me being around.

more dancing and general enjoying!

i really enjoyed this little festival and felt like it was the perfect homecoming. getting to see some of the folks there that i had missed and just being back into the thick of things. it really reminded me how far i have come in a year and how much there still is to learn about these people, this place and its rich, wonderful history and culture. i am so glad to be back here and to be starting another year in japan. here is to one more and to having a clue! yeehaw!

back in the USA: west side bliss

2010-08-17T15:41:00.001+09:00

and after ten days at home though i was sad to say good-bye to my family and friends there i was soooo anxious to be back in OR with all of my wonderful, loving people there. as soon as i saw this i knew it was going to be a great second round of my holiday...

my blonde Oregon sister Sam picked me up at the PDX airport with a Voo-doo doughnut. nothing says portland like one of those. one hug and one taste and i was really back in my american home. and like any good oregonian would, she then whisked me off to the newest neighborhood brewery for us to have a taste of the NW hops and barleys that i had been missing. oh man! words cant describe how good that first taste was. again, tasting like home.

i had a super full and super fun schedule for the next nine days though it seemed to kind of fill itself as the days went on (hmmm, or Sam had a great hand in that. jah bless her little organizing self!) and i got to catch up with old friends from all over, old students who i ADORE, dance with my Oregon family, camp at a seriously amazing site, and just relish in the beauty that was all around me. the people and places of Oregon really have captured my heart and it will forever be my american home now. no matter how far i go i know that those mountains, trees and rivers will be there to welcome me back, along with the most caring, thoughtful, gentle and adoring people i have ever met (outside of my NE family of course!). the love and comfort that i feel there with those people is enough to bring me to tears even now and if i think about it too much i often feel like a crazy woman for ever having left. but they know my heart and welcome me back knowing too that my heart has always been there with them.

you all in Oregon who matter so much to me know who you are. thank you from the bottom of my heart for making my homecoming really feel that it was such a thing. i cant wait to reunite with you for the battle of the purple capes (jerrys birthday), the ripplebrook, the tillamook and the crazy laughter and love again next year. you keep me smiling with the love and joy you send me each day.

some snaps of these brillant people and places:

back in the USA: the flatlands

2010-08-17T15:08:00.002+09:00

sooo, it has been more than a minute since i have attended to this blog and though there is nothing to show for it, i have been thinking of it and it has been on the to-do list since i returned home about 10 days ago now. i will do my best, but this will take a few posts to catch everyone up to speed here.

my journey back to the states began on thursday july 15th here in japan. i left school early that day (a la my principals request, because she wanted to make sure that i would get to where i needed to be that night so as to not mess up the rest of my travel. what a lady!) and walked home to collect my carry on bag and take a shower and the cab was there in no time waiting for me to begin the long haul back. the cab dropped me at the naru ferry port and i bought my ticket and enjoyed the short 35 min ride to fukue island. there my friend brittney (love her!) and her brother, who was visiting from Arkansas, picked me up and took me to the airport so i could make my flight, which i had just rearranged to make earlier due to the impending storm. i caught the short flight from there no problem and landed in fukuoka around 5pm. i was to stay the night there and catch a plane in the morning so i hopped on the subway from the airport and got out a few stops later to start searching for my hotel. i walked in the wrong direction for about 15 minutes before i stopped to ask for directions and then found the hotel easily. after dropping off my back pack i went out in search of dinner after wading through the dinner crowd i decided that taking a bento back to my room would be the easiest. dinner in bed along with a few beers and catching up on old "Daily Show" espisodes and i was ready to have what i knew would be my last normal sleep for weeks.

up and at 'em on friday and at the airport via subway again by 7:30am so I could pick up my bags, which i had had delievered days earlier through a baggage service, by 8am. picked up the bags and wheeled them 200 ft to the check in counter where they whisked them away and checked them all the way to Omaha. checking me all the way to Omaha though was another thing. my passport and ticket had different names on them (Beth/Elizabeth) and so i was told i was going to have to check in again in Nartia/Tokyo. this was bad news as i was only going to have about an hour anyhow to make a connection from a domestic to an international, but i didnt let it bother me too much and kept the prize in mind; t-minus 20 hours and i would be with my family! once i hit the ground in tokyo i literaly ran to the check in counter with about 30 minutes to spare before my plane was to leave. i got to the check in line and the woman was very helpful and then appologetic because she was out of isle seats as i had requested, so she wondered if it would be okay if she put me in first class...DUH! only a japanese person would appologize for this, er, inconvienence. so i rode first class from tokyo all the way to chicago (12 hours) and man was it NICE!

after landing back on homeland soil i was overtaken by america in general. all things, people, food, signs, language, gestures ect ect were SOOOO BIG! it really is true that all things in japan are just smaller, everything. that is one of the huge (no pun intended) differences from there to here. i relished in the small stuff like talking to strangers again and being able to understand everything that was going on around, even as strange as it all was for me. one more flight and i was back in NE and welcomed by the arms of my baby sister and then my mother and nephew and niece who were waiting in the car. tired and unaware of the day or time i just knew it was nice to be with them.

i was then able to spend the next 10 days with my family and some good friends in NE catching up and enjoying the beautiful midwest summer. it was never too hot and i got my midwest thunder and lightning that i love so i was happy as a clam. mom fed me the best chocolate cake and various home cooked meals that i had been dreaming of since i saw her last, my sisters just showered me with love and fun, the kids wore me out playing, dad gave me the gift of listening to and wondering about the world and the people in it with him and gram made me laugh and smile with her funny ways. i am blessed to have such wonderful people to call my family in NE and it is always so hard to leave them and know that they will all change and grow so much before i see them again.

as an added bonus i got to spend many evening with old friends who i hadnt seen in such a long time and just lazily catch up with life in back porch settings, live music dancin and reunioning formal style. life really has blessed me with beautiful people in so many ways and places and i will never stop being grateful and joyous over these relationships. i am so proud to call my NE friends my friends.

because these amazing people believed in me first, i believe in myself and had the courage to realize my dreams. they are treasures to me and i miss and love them daily. not such a bad start to the journey back in the states. not so bad at all.

雨!　　ame! rain!

2010-07-14T17:15:00.001+09:00

this was the flight of stairs that i had to climb this morning on my way to work. no, it is not a pretty waterfall that is nearby, it is stairs.

i woke up this morning (for the second time) at about 5am to the wonderful sounds of rain (HARD rain) intermixed with thundering booms and flashes of lightning. it was fantastic as i have missed the good old midwest storms with these elements since i have been living in the NW. naru has given me one of the best storms of my life today. thunder has sounded for most of the day and it has rained more here in the last 12 hours than i have ever seen it rain in my life. the streets this morning were like rivers, and as you can see from this keitai snap shot, water was flowing everywhere. i rather liked it, but the islanders didnt so much and started elementary/jr high an hour late due to the excessive downpour.

fingers crossed that it does not interfere with my travels back to the states that start tomorrow. look out america, here i come!!

2010-07-14T17:09:00.000+09:00

you see that? that is 650 yen for a small bunch of purple grapes. yes that is about six american dollars for what you are probably used to getting for about a dollar or two at the most. prices of fruit here are incredibly high and totally insane. it didnt stop me from buying a peach for four dollars a week ago though. sometimes i just have to indulge myself a bit...

crabby

2010-07-14T17:06:00.000+09:00

i keep barely missing these little guys while i am riding my bike around the island. they can move pretty quickly, but still, it just isnt something that i am used to looking for on the road.

watch out for these guys!

there are just some things i will never understand about this place

2010-07-12T10:23:00.001+09:00

have to have a two second rant about this today:

why is it that when the women i work with use the bathrooms here they dont lock the doors? grant it, there are two doors in the bathrooms; one you close behind you and lock (at least I do) when you enter the stall and this is where the sink is for washing, and then another one you close behind you and lock (again assuming other people do, but not sure) while you actually USE the bathroom. i have walked in on every woman i work with washing her hands in the first part of the bathroom and they always look mortified that i have walked in on them. HELLOOOOOO!!!, just lock the door and i will know you are in there using the facilities! problem solved and you will save us both a bit of embarassment! me on the other hand, i lock that door so when they go to try it they know im in there and no one is embarassed. what is the deal with that...?

okaerinasi me...雨　お帰りなさい (rainy season)

2010-07-01T13:28:00.000+09:00

though i have lived through my share of rain now that i call myself a portlander i have yet to live through a rainy season in japan, though i am now offically working on it.

season offically kicked off about two weeks ago, but by the count here in nagasaki ken it was about two or three weeks late. we have had our share of downpours and drizzles and even got a real thunderstorm with lightning and HUGE claps of thunder a few days ago. (said thunder was some of the loudest i have ever heard, and i reacted with a small chirp and a leap from my desk, but so did many other people in the staff room so all good there.) but really, the rain has been consistenly...wet.

i have never expereinced the dampness that i am now in naru. everything drips with saturation and condensation. the staff fridge is sweating from the freezer unit on top and the leather straps of accessories are growing mold like petri dishes. i even noticed that my trusty backpack (the one i use everyday to and from school and such) is growing mold now on the straps and bottom side. my birkenstock sandals (my indoor shoes at school) stink to high heaven and now i am lost for how to get the smell out. how is all of this even possible? so with rainy season i am finding it is also deep cleaning season and running-a-fan-24-hours-a-day season.

today is for some reason or another the magical day when they start running the air conditioner in the staffroom. (it is the only room in the school air conditioned). it has been hot and humid here since the rain started, (really, really humid) and the days at school have been the kind where you just kind of sit in your own stank and wait for work to end and daydream about the cold shower to come. it is only sort of akward for me as i sweat about 1000 times more than anyone in this whole school and im pretty sure that i stink about the same. (WHY dont japanese people sweat like this?????? i swear they are always cold and literally it took less than five minutes before the ladies in the staffroom put on sweaters when the AC was turned on.) the nurse (who i guess is okay with bodily contact, or more so than most other people, which i guess is also a good thing considering she IS the nurse) touched me a few weeks ago in the midst of this heat and told me in japanese that i felt like a heater. i had not been doing anything strenuous and was also not running a fever. i just had to tell her like i tell everyone when they ask me if im cold, and they ALWAYS ask me if im cold, "im a hot blooded american" and pat my beefy arms. they smile at this, but i dont think that they really understand that i am not cold.

so now here i sit in my nicely air conditioned office room writing to all of you lovlies. i was reminded by a dear friend this morning that this weekend is the one where people blow things up for a reason back home. happy independence day to all of you. may you all enjoy the blessings of summertime in america with friends and family close by to encourage smiles and laughter.

i will be home cleaning and enjoying the good bit of rain that is falling on this parade. as an old friend once reminded me, "it cant rain all the time Sunshine!"

i will be seeing many of you soon. buckets of love from me to you.
namaste

reaquainted with summer

2010-06-22T19:10:00.001+09:00

i'm going to say this before i post this so those who need to know, know. if you are either one of my sisters and you are reading this, it is in your best interest to just skip this post. you won't be missing out on anything i promise and you'll sleep better tonight anyhow. okay, and now that i have said that, i will go ahead and add that if you don't like spiders, no really really really don't like spiders you too can go ahead and quit reading now and i promise that it won't hurt my feelings.

so today is spider day here it seems, or at least my getting reacquainted with them day. you'd have to be an idiot to think that you can live in a place like this with this much lushness and greenery all around you and not be prone to having a run in or ten with "wild life" everyday. it just happens and i happen to love it, though i know there are people on the island that aren't that thrilled with it. one of the most predominant species of "wild life" in naru is the spider. my old friend and i happen to be very facinated with them and how many shapes, sizes and colors they come in and how cool their webs are ect. so i welcome their presence, but today i was reminded that they are back in a few interesting ways.

first encounter: i was almost through my bento today. the regular saba bento that i usually have and i went to take a chopstick full of rice and realized there was something moving in the tray. well, it was a spider of course. not a big spider, but one of the jumping ones that we have here. they run across my desk from time to time so it wasn't a huge surprise, but in my lunchbox! this was a new one. i carefully picked up my tray and walked it outside and deposited said spider back into it's home. i was now finished with lunch it seemed.

second encounter: simple and honest. spider web removal from both the basket of my bike and the laundry lines on my porch. no big deals here. doing my best to keep spiders safe while i did it and make sure that they get somewhere without me trampling on them. easy.

third encounter: folding laundry on the couch and see something moving. a spider about the size of a tennis ball (pretty average size for this species here) moves from beneath my underwear. we can't have that now can we! so i fetch a soup bowl from the kitchen and make haste to get it back to its home. mission accomplished with some coaxing and directional talk after he dropped out of the bowl on our way to the door.

this spider stuff is taking some time today. i think i am meant to be paying attention to what is surrounding me and being more careful about what i am doing and observing things a bit closer perhaps. either way, spiders are here to stay and so am i...for awhile longer at least. i'm glad that we get along so well. thanks for having me on your island spiders, trees, hawks, crows and everything else that makes up this beautiful place. well done.

golden week revisited

2010-06-11T11:49:00.000+09:00

i never posted this pic i took on my keitai of the ume (ocean) while i sat and listened to a couple of guys jam acoustic guitars into and over this sunset. what a wonderful memory this is for me.

2010-06-11T11:45:00.001+09:00

here is the full set of kitties now residing on my porch. i did everything i could last night to rid the porch of anything comfortable for them to sleep on, especially after their mom left me a HUGE dead rat right outside the doorway. these little ones HAVE to go. yikes.

doctor woes

2010-06-11T11:40:00.003+09:00

so, though i have tried as earnestly as i can to avoid seeing any and all doctors while i am here in japan, (much like i do back in the states. sorry i know you hate to hear that mom.) i have ended up seeing quite a few in the last few months. i have shared my great success in seeing two eye doctors and as thrilling as that was, i knew that my luck would run out at some point, and last week it did indeed.

after my longest day of teaching two weeks ago (13 hours and seven classes) i came home as usual and just wanted to sit down and have a relaxing moment with a nice biru. i cracked open the can and took a hefty slurp and OOOOOWWWWWWWWWWCHHHH! that not good wonderful feeling of a raw nerve being dipped into beer-y coldness happened. many expletives went through my mind at that point, as i have had a root canal before and remember that this was the feeling of where that fun time originated. i thought maybe it was a fluke feeling though and stupidly tried for another drink, smaller this time, but alas, the same pain. so i one-side chewed my way through some room temperature noodles and vegetables, left the beer on the table and tried to sleep.

the next day i knew that i had to do something about all of this and so i got the ball rolling by asking my jr high JTE (japanese teacher of english) if she knew if naru even had a dentist. she said that in fact we did (HUGE surprise to me, HUGE!) but that i should ask nohara sensei (a goto island native and has been in naru for a few years now) more about it. so i went to ask her and she said that yes we did have a dentist here, but she said it in the unique japanese way that means yes but no. i pried a bit more as politely as i could and tried to tell her about the pain i was in and that eating and drinking anything at this point was kind of hard and so the quicker the better on the fix sort of deal, but she then dared to tell me NOT to see the dentist here. in case you are not aware, any japanese person telling you anything definitely is kind of a big deal. they will usually politely dance around a no as long as they can and then just leave you with a smile about whatever you were asking their opinion of. she gave me her no but then, in perfect japanese fashion, passed the buck onto an authority, the school nurse. she said that before i decide that i should go talk to yoshihara sensei about it and get her opinion on the dentist here. i didnt have time to see her just then and had to run back to the high school so i told her i would return and we could get her opinion together. no problem she assured me.

so back to the high school teaching with a different teacher who is married to a naru native and had been here awhile. nakagawa sensei (i believe that you got a blurry shot of him sleeping in the karaoke bar awhile back here?!...) said that he has seen the dentist here and that he had done a nice job with his teeth and was no worse for the wear after seeing him. his smile is good and his teeth are not bad looking, so now i have his opinion to take into consideration also. okay okay...

back to the jr high for another class and a talk with the nurse. nohara sensei accompanies me and as soon as she asks the nurse, yoshihara sensei, about the dentist i know the answer. she advises me that i should just work on getting an appointment with a dentist on fukue and that it would be a much better idea to avoid seeing the dentist here. technically she says that the dentists in fukue are very good and that the dentist here is okay. i get the message and i start to get a little nervous. i need the dentist NOW and an appointment in fukue will take at least three or four days to arrange, maybe longer. i ask nohara sensei to see if she can set up the appointment with the very good doctor for me on the following tuesday, four days from then.

back to the high school and word has gotten around that i need a dentist. my all too eager friend and tea lady is on the case and tells me that she has already gotten me an appointment with the dentist here and that i can go with one of the office guys who is going anyway this afternoon. now i am nervous, but willing to go as she tells me that the woman who was here last year doing my job went and all was well. okay, that is two people that say he is okay and who i trust and two people who say he's "okay". im in pain, i am going to take a chance.

so that afternoon i walk down the street to the dentists office. i have passed this building hundreds of times by now but have never known what it was exactly. just a tiny little place that felt a lot like a trailer, but no wheels. breathe beth, breathe. the woman behind the counter was friendly enough and the waiting room chairs were comfortable enough to doze a little in as i waited. okay, maybe this will be alright i thought. finally after all of the other folks had gone i was called back to wait in a dentist chair for the doctor. i was feeling really nervous now at seeing the "doctors rooms" and realizing they were pretty dusty and old. there were two chairs in the room separated only by a partition so i could hear everything that was going on with the office guy's visit, though i did my best to ignore the drilling i was hearing with some nice reading material i found on a chair beside me. it was a nice little magazine with a picture of a japanese golfer on the cover. a sports magazine i thought, this will be fine. well the first half of the magazine had a bunch of various articles in it; cooking and home wares, beauty and sports, and even a few short comic stories. as i turned casually to the back of the magazine though something happened in it, all of a sudden there were naked japanese women on the pages. not just a little naked, fully naked women in the strangest naked-woman poses i have ever witnessed. i laughed out loud, maybe due to surprise and put it down and took up another issue to see if it was a fluke. strolling through a new issue i found that the first half was again very family, casual home maker oriented and then it happened again...but this time it was a comic strip of a woman demonstrating how to um, how do i say this nicely, servicing a man. yes a comic strip. and of course then after the comic strip there were more awkward naked lady photos. i was laughing out of amusement now and put it back on the chair for fear that the doctor would walk in a see me checking out nihonjin boobies. oh japan, you are always full of surprises.

so now i was in a little bit of a lighter mood and feeling better despite becoming more and more aware of how old all of the equipment and tools were that surrounded me, including the ones which he would be putting in my mouth. so for a few more slightly tense moments i sat and waited and then heard the dentist approach. i did my best to tell him in japanese what was going on with my tooth and he did his best in english to try and help. he poked around in my mouth and then told me that my problem was not with my teeth at all. i politely explained that there was a sharp pain in my tooth and that there must be something wrong with it. he then instructed his nurse to give me an x-ray while he sat in his office and smoked and found that my tooth was in fine shape and told me again that my problem was not with my teeth at all but rather with my bite. with choppy english, crazy japanese and some help from some dentist props he told me that i was a grinder and that was my issue. nothing with my teeth, i was grinding my teeth and that was why ONE of my teeth hurt so acutely. he sent me home with some ibuprofen and told me to come back next week. needless to say i walked out of there feeling very frustrated and freaked out.

luckily i had already started plan B into action and nohara sensei had set up an appointment for me on the following tuesday. she said i needed to take someone with me to help translate and my supervisor at the high school agreed with strange enthusiasm. so the wait began for the good dentist...

tuesday finally came and we left early to get there in plenty of time to sit outside the office for an hour before it opened. upon walking through the doors i already felt better about this dentist as nurses flew around the office in clean uniforms and were doing a meticulous job of cleaning the entire office. there was hope...

i got back to the chair and must say that i was surprised at how wonderful the whole experience was. my nurse was kind and gentle and tried very hard to speak english with me that she knew even though she knew i had an interpreter. while she was in my mouth though it was really nice to have someone speak for me when she was asking a question, as i had given my supervisor the full run down of what was wrong with my teeth and any other health information that i thought would be helpful. the just exchanged the information that was needed and he let me know what was going on. none of that awkward trying to talk while there are dental tools in your mouth. i now feel strongly that everyone should take someone with them to the dentist, as it is a much nicer process all together.

the dentist finally came in and did a great job of speaking his little english with me as well. he was a kind and gentle man also and after only a few moments of poking around in my mouth he came out with the news that i had not one, not two but THREE cavities and not to worry that he could fill them painlessly. relief. i finally knew that i was not crazy for feeling this tiny, sharp pain and that i could rest assured that i really was not a grinder as the other doctor had said. (WHATTT!!!!???? i have never ground my teeth.) he fixed me right up with some Novocaine and had me out of there in under an hour. it was not without its laughs though as i think that the whole office at some point stopped by to take a look at my teeth (kirei! honto! aaaaaa!) and at one point my supervisor, the dentist and two nurses hovered over my face with their eyes in my mouth. my supervisor even hit his head on the dentists light as he tried to move back, that is how close they all were! it was interesting to hear the dentist talk about how different my teeth were from the japanese teeth he is used to treating and that it must have to do with the anthropological differences in our origins. he was interested in asking about the permanent wires in my mouth that my orthodontist put there years ago after my braces were removed. he thinks highly of my american teeth doctors i can tell you that much.

and so in the end i am pain free and have been reassured that my teeth will be fine. oh and i have insurance to cover it all and so getting 3 cavities filled, having a full on inspection and cleaning cost me about 30$ US. hell of a deal.

nozaki pics

2010-06-08T21:10:00.000+09:00

okay, so that is it for the nozaki trip pics! even one of the happy wanderer :) and these are just 4 of the 5 little criers that haunt my porch now.

lucky day!

2010-06-06T15:50:00.000+09:00

i almost had a heart attack today, really. they told me that i was getting a new "pas con" today and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. oh, for those of you who arent hip to the katakana english yet, a pas con is what they call a laptop computer around here. (personal computer is where their word comes from. a bit of a stretch, but once you get used to kata english its a snap!) so i am more than elated to report that i am now writing to you all from my very new and very lovely pas con!!!! it loads internet pages in an instant and has a version of microsoft word that was made in this decade...i have died and gone to heaven. in case i have failed to mention it, i have been pissed at my old computer pert near every day for the last, um, i'd say eight months. it crashed on a daily basis and took MINUTES to load web pages and you could not even think of multi-tasking on it (read: open more than one window at a time). my supervisor told me just last week that he thought it would be a long while before i was getting a new one, so really i had just started to use it less and less and have been getting by on a lot of hand made lessons.

soooo...it arrived today and they installed it for me and even transferred all of my files for me and now i have no excuses for not using a computer as it should be used, well, unless anyone still considers the fact that all of the programs are still in japanese (kata, hiragana and kanji) and thinks that is a hurdle. whatever, small potatoes to what i was dealing with. and now, off to the races!!!!!

okay, so catching up. last weekend i met up with a bunch of othergoto island english teachers and we all headed out to our friend brett's island of ojika. it is north and has this sweet little abandoned island that is about a 30 minute ferry ride away called nozaki. no body lives there anymore because the population just slowly died out (as it is doing on ALL of the gotos, but that is another story for another time) and no one could really sustain life there anymore. the last people moved off the island about 8 years ago and left tons of evidence of their exsitence. everything from toothbrushes to pots and pans remain in houses dotted along the coastline of nozaki and you can wonder in and around all of the houses and feel the ghosts now residing there. now the island belongs to the deer who are everywhere and the brave people who come over to visit and lodge at the hostel that remains in the center of the island. the hostel is the old school building and has been transformed into comfortable quarters for at least a few dozen people, complete with a beer vending machine and everything. all 11 of us stayed one night on the island and explored a good bit.

the hostel is just a few minutes walk from a really fantastic beach and there is an excellent hike that we took to the highest point on the island and one of the oldest shrines in japan. supposedly constructed in the year 700 AD it towers on the hillside looking over the east china sea below. its location is superb and has vistas that the gods themselves must have brainstormed awhile on. being able to soak all of this up on just another weekend adventure is such an amazing feeling. not too far from home, but so far from where i began.

im leaving you all with a few pics of my nozaki island adventure and oh, a few snaps of the family of cats who have taken up on my back porch. fingers crossed that they will be grown up enough to leave soon, but for now they are a sweet sight to sneek a peek at every now and again. there are five of them and four of them are black and one is white. their mom is all black. strange goto cat genes i guess...

matta ne!

(okay, my bad, i just realized that i didnt save the pictures on my new computer, so i will get them up at home in a jiff. sorry im a little flustered still from the shock of having a computer that works!)

bring on the may flowers and their magical powers

2010-05-24T09:02:00.001+09:00

there has been so much to do lately, that i feel like i have almost come full circle in the "having nothing to do vs. everything to do" chain of events. when i arrived ten months ago i could barely ask where the bathroom was and had days and days of sitting in a staffroom full of idle time and strange, silent coworkers. it is my pleasure to report that the tides are rolling in and have changed significantly here in naru.

i had the day off of work last monday due to working on sunday for a PTA meeting. their PTA meetings here are not the coffee and danish sort of casual gathering that i picture them being back home (i have never actually been to one in the states, so i cant say with any authority). of course i showed up in the wrong clothes again and of course i was the last to know that i would be introducing myself in front of everyone, in japanese of course, but besides that, it was a suit style occasion and there was a long itinerary involved. loads of bowing and clapping and standing up and sitting back down and on and on. i have no idea what was accomplished because i really didnt make that much of an effort to pay attention, but it didnt seem like that big of a deal to my coworkers around me who were sleeping either, so, eh.

okay, sorry i got off track, so monday last week, off of work, yes. i had an eye infection last week and had successfully seen the eye doctor that comes in once a week to naru from nagasaki, so i was feeling confident about taking the next step in health care and going to a private practice and getting a full eye exam. i had to of course go to my neighboring island to do this as we dont have any health services (for those of us who arent 80+ years old) outside of the biyoin (hospital). so i took the ferry over and my trusty, rusty bike and sought out the eye clinic. i knew where it was (sort of) because a japanese friend had pointed it out when i was on the island weeks ago. after parking my bike i went in and gave my insurance card to one of the three receptionists behind the front desk and she said something to me that i thought was "sit down and it will be about an hour" but much to my surprise, even though the lobby was FULL of old people waiting to see the doctor my name was called after waiting about five minutes. i was very lucky and everyone who helped me from the guy who did my eye tests to the doctor who had the final say spoke some english and were really helpful. at one point when i was almost done a woman showed up next to me with purse in hand and asked me in english if she could help me. i just kind of sat there not knowing what was going on and then she told me that she was the doctors wife and that she had come to help translate for the nurses. seriously, she came from where ever she was and quit what ever she was doing just to help me for ten minutes!? i am and continue to be amazed at the lengths strangers go to to help a gaijin girl out here. bless their hearts.

after the doctor was finished and i had new contacts in hand and a new perscription for glasses i was feeling really brave and decided to go try for a new pair of glasses too. they had given me a map of the glasses shop that they are partnered with (later to find out that the doctor and owner of the glasses shop are friends, of course) and without really trying to find it, i did. i went in and the whole thing took less than 15 minutes. i told them what i needed and picked out the pair that i wanted and they told me that it would be about two or three weeks and that they would just send them over to me when they were done, COD of course. (have i mentioned how much i love COD, cause i do and it is soooo convienent. you can pay COD for everything here from new computers to books.) so that was that i off i went running a few other errands before catching the ferry back home. a successful day for sure.

sooo, yesterday was a kind of rainy but warm day and i had nothing to do in the afternoon so i decided that i would hop the ferry and just go wander around fukue (neighboring island) for awhile. as i was walking down the main arcade (that is what they call the big shopping streets in japan; arcades) without really thinking about it i passed by the glasses shop, only to look up at the same moment that the owner was peering out to see if i was who i was (i was walking on the other side of the street from the store front) and then he threw up his biggest japanese YES (think big O over your head, YMCA style letters) and waved. i thought what the hell and so i ran across the street to see what the big O was all about. i came in and he was excitedly telling me that my lenses had just arrived and that he could put the glasses together for me right now no problem (this is only 6 days later mind you, not even a week). Great! his wife insisted that i sit down and wait and she tried out her best english with me and we had some casual laughs, and before long the glasses were on my face and i was out the door. really, seriously, the efficiency here is just overwhelming. i cant say enough good things about how organized and well run everything is. my 2-3 week glasses were done in less than a week. yeeeeees.

so it was a good day of unexpected surprises. i stopped at the grocery by the port on my way out and as i was baggin up my groceries i moved my basket so a woman could get in next to me and she said in perfect, plain english, "oh, thank you so much. excuse me." it always trips me out so much when people speak to me in english out of the blue. i never expect it, but if they know english and are the least bit confident about it, they will find whatever reason they can to speak to you. she was really nice and asked what country i was from and told me that she plays the saxophone and wants to come to america to visit new orleans, but was still concerned about the effects of katrina. i told her all was clear to go there and that she should, it would blow your mind i said. we said goodbye and see you later like we were friends who met often and that was that. days here are always full of the unexpected.

so when was the last time you were at the grocery and surprised to hear someone speak your native language? when was the last time you felt like you had conquored a small part of life by simple making a successful visit to the doctor? when was the last time that life surprised you with small bits of goodness? i'd like to bet that the latter was not so long ago even if the former was...

be well where ever you are calling home my friends,
namaste

ps-leaving you with a few shots of spring flowers on the island. there are sooo many flowers here, more than i have ever seen anywhere and as i said to some fellow teachers who came to visit this weekend, "these are the flowers you're picking up at the new seasons market for $10.99 a half dozen. here they are, just growing in the ditch." love it.

caught

2010-05-13T20:29:00.000+09:00

caught this crane on the bow if this fishing boat on my bike ride on one of the east bays after work today. its the small stuff that really gets me.

one grateful, golden week after another

2010-05-11T21:18:00.002+09:00

i just want to start this post out by saying how very grateful i am to the universe and every piece of it and person in it and ounce of energy that has gotten me to my wonderful place on this island. every day here is a gift that is larger than life and each day i just try to chip away at it's awesomeness. breathing salty ocean air infused with the richest damp forest smell is a gift in and of itself. i continue to find reasons why i love life and the hidden beauty that lies within its quiet places. life here is surreal and it keeps me living in the moment. right now is soo good.

and now i want to reflect on some very good moments in the recent past. it was golden week here last week and it marks the second biggest holiday season of the year for folks in japan. loads of people traveling all over this amazing country and everyone is genki genki genki!!!! (happy) i had the great privilege of traveling with some japanese and american teacher friends from the mainland and hanging with them on a road trip across our main island of kyushu. we met up with many other people along the way from loads of different countries and doing loads of different things in japan. so nice to touch base with the rest of the world and get a glimpse at what life is like in so many other places.

our main traveling was done in and around oita prefecture. it is beautiful, green, mountainous land that is (of course) surrounded by the sea. we stayed one night at a gorgeous mountainside campsite on the mainland with a bunch of college mates of one of my japanese friends with whom we were traveling. it was fun to drop in on their reunion of sorts. just like the ones back home, only maybe a few differences... we did take time to tour the famous tunnel that was just down the way from us too. a buddhist monk dug it by hand for 30 years to help folks traveling through the area to have a safe route for travel. there is a road that flanks the tunnel which is quite famous as well and is dug into the side of the cliff. like driving through a cave above ground. fantastic fun.

after we hiked around down in the gorge here we came back up to camp for a great bbq and loads of classy fun with new friends!

after an evening of fun we packed back into the car for a three hour haul to the edge of the prefecture and unloaded our camping gear onto a little motor boat and hopped a 10 minute ferry to a very remote island for a music festival there. this festival really blew my mind and gave me the warm feeling of being back home with my people there. nothing like music to break the barriers of language and culture. it was the most home that i have felt since i touched down in nippon over nine months ago. i will let you enjoy the sights that i captured now. pictures do speak a thousand words...

and so with some dancing, tunes jammed live, loads of laughing, tugging of ropes and intoxicating sparkling seas under my belt i take the world on again as the soul gaijin on this little island in the middle of nowhere and everywhere.

namaste friends

following custom

2010-04-30T16:33:00.000+09:00

there are a few things that japanese people are known for doing really well. singing karaoke and sleeping whenever they have a free moment. this is one of my coworkers doing both in fine japanese fashion. he is a great guy and deserved a little rest. some of my coworkers though were encouraging me to karate chop him in the adams apple. this is what happens when you give them shochu. they become less than polite and cut throat! (sorry it isnt the best picture either...i had to sneak it when i took it and now i am having to sneek posting it as i sit right beside this man and surely dont want to have him thinking that i am delighting in poking any fun at him! )

as for me now, i am off to celebrate what they call golden week here. it starts with this coming monday which is constitution memorial day, then tuesday is green day and finally wednesday is childrens day. i have no idea what monday and tuesday mean and a little bit of an idea on what wednesday is about. i hope to find out, but i will be celebrating work off anyhow on another tiny island on the other side of the mainland. yes for beach music festivals and camping and all of the wonderful things that will go with it.

cheers to those of you who will celebrate cinco de mayo wednesday too. im sure it will be a great holiday for you there!

namaste

let's biking goto!

2010-04-29T00:10:00.001+09:00

these beautiful ladies accompanied me to kamigoto for the weekend along with about 30 other English teachers from our prefecture (state in japanese terms) last weekend. we biked the island and had a super party afterwords. what a wonderful way to spend a weekend; island hopping on a bike!

this is kamigoto and some smaller islands surrounding it. kamigoto is about an hour ferry ride from naru. as the crow flys though, it really cant be more than half a mile away. the ferry just has to cruise through a lot of other islands to get there and that takes time i guess. a beautiful boat ride anyhow.

more kamigoto

kamigoto flowers (we have the same ones in naru of course)

i slept on the beach after the party. it was glorious to wake up to the sound of the sea and the bright sunshine. oh and there was that fisherman that was pretty much standing over me when i woke up and proceeded to talk to me for about ten minutes right after i woke up. nothing like practicing your japanese first thing in the morning!

hope life is warm and sunny where you all are living. inside and out i am feeling love and warmth here in japan. golden week coming soon and i can't wait!!!!

health check day

2010-04-16T17:37:00.001+09:00

i got a notice from the sensei who sits next to me at my desk in the high school (he is an english teacher) that we would be having a urine test today with many more health checks in the weeks to follow. great i said, can you tell me what to expect? well, he is a man, but a progressive man so he decided to throw caution into the wind and went ahead and tried to explain to me what i needed to know. pee in the cup and pour it into the little tube, easy right?! well i knew that there was to be more to it than that, so i went ahead and took the notice that was handed out with directions all in kanji (the pictures were not very good either) and asked some of the lady senseis at the elementary and jr high school if they could tell me anything that i didnt know already. i am glad i asked. we got the "packet" a day early which i didnt think much of considering the organization that happens around this place most days, so i could show the others what was inside and what i might be having to do with it. well i kept asking questions and kept asking to make sure that i would be saving myself any embarassment and the last question i asked was "so when i am done peeing in the cup, should i put it in a bag or something to carry it from the bathroom to the nurses office to drop it off?". inui sensei (woman, english teacher at the jr high) just started smiling and told me that it wouldnt be a problem at all and that i should definitaly put it in a bag, especially since i would be peeing in a cup AT HOME. it was like homework to take the little cup home and to make sure that you could collect the first pee of the morning. ohhhhhhh, now that makes sense to me! i get it! that is why we got the cups early and why all of the other questions i asked seemed strange to her and the other teachers that i was asking. so in the end i actually got this one right, or at least i think i got it right. no one has told me that i have diabetes yet or that the pee was not labeled or collected right. it is the small victories that really make me smile here.

so the whole reason behind doing all of this is a good one that i learned more about as i was asking questions yesterday. basically every one in japan has to take a pee test and a lung exam once a year as a sort of precautionary measure to keep the population healthy. if there is a problem like diabetes forming or some sort of lung problem, they are thinking that they can catch it before it gets too bad, AND expensive to treat. why would they care you ask? well, they have socialized health care here and every one gets it, it is inexpensive and it is usually pretty good care. so if the govt can save some money by giving these tests every year they are going to do it. wow, now that makes sense and i feel like there are a few places in the world that could learn a thing or two from the way that they do things here. next week is the lung test and further down the line this year we get blood drawn. the students undergo many other health screenings but i think that they are for more reasons than just purely for health.

just another interesting thing about life here...

happy friday everyone

church

2010-04-12T18:59:00.000+09:00

well, it took a lot of cycling up and down hills and a bit of getting lost, but i made it to the island's abandoned church before sunset and snapped a quick pic. the gotos islands where I live were home to the "secret christians" many years ago here in japan. they hid out in the gotos essentially to be safe from persecution. their legacy lives on in the many beautiful churches that are on all of the islands. some of them are still in use but most of them are just empty and beautiful like this one here. kirei!

Naru Apato-Mogie!

2010-03-31T20:41:00.001+09:00

As I recently have promised my dear aunt Mogie that I would upload some pictures of my humble abode in Japan I felt it necessary to follow through...and so here is the grand tour for all of you who are curious as to what my apato in Japan looks like! And yes, it is much bigger than I thought that it would be, but it is not BIG by any means.

This is what I would see if you were knocking on my front door before I opened it to (maybe???) let you in. The entryway I guess some folks would call it. I call it the place where I leave my shoes, coats and umbrellas.

And this is what you would see when (if???) I let you in. The toilet room is the door on the left there and the bath/washing machine room is just off to the right there. Straight ahead is the kitchen/eating space and then the room with the yoga mat on the floor and the couch is my bedroom/yoga space/movie viewing room. The nasty reflection back there is coming off of my back door which opens to the art studio. Oh, I will mention here that the floors in the entryway/kitchen are wood and the floors in the bed/yoga space are tatami (woven bamboo) mats. You NEVER wear shoes on tatami, believe me, Japanese people will really freak out. Really.

Okay, I know I said I wouldn't talk about potties anymore, but just one more time cause this is cool. This is the toilet room off to the left in the last photo and my, well (western, obviously) toilet! It is the only thing in the room and as you will notice there is a faucet and a basin on top of the commode in lieu of having a whole separate sink in the room. Saves time and water like this: When you flush the toilet the faucet on top starts running and you can wash your hands with that water and as you wash your hands that water then runs into the bowl of the toilet filling it for next time you need to use the toilet with your soapy water. Genius I tell you. Why don't we do this in America? This is a standard toilet in most homes and restaurants and the like. Seriously genius. Don't even get me started on the TP roll dispenser. It is amazing too.

And if you peered into the room across from the toilet room you would find this; my washing/bathroom. There is a standard sink in here with a mirror and the washing machine you see here and a door that opens into the shower/bathroom. The shower room is quite large and you can sit or stand or whatever in there really as the shower head is adjustable/movable and the tub is quite a bit deeper than the standard American tub. When I sit in it it covers my shoulders. Those flat plastic things you see there in between the tub and the washer are to cover the tub so you can reuse the water. Japanese people don't get into the tub when they are dirty, they use it after they have bathed in the shower and just use it to soak, so when they are done they can cover the water and use it again the next day or hours later or whatever. Another good idea, but I never do it and use the tub as I was trained to do back home; to take a bath in. For shame!

Here is a better shot of the tub. See, it's deeper! Deeper is better I can assure you...

Okay, so we have arrived in the kitchen! This is the cooking/washing area, the same side of the apato as the wash/bath room for reference. Featured here is from right to left; my refrigerator/freezer (Japanese size!) with my microwave/oven on top of it and my toaster oven on top of that, my sink, dish drying/dinner preparing area, my stove top i.e. glorified camping stove. Behind the sink is where I keep many dry foods and dishes (European style which is a little weird considering where I am, but whatever) and in the foreground there is my moving island which stores food and serves as a floating eating/preparation space.

This is the opposite side of the kitchen. The table with my exercise ball which I often just use as a chair, bamboo shelving above it and the bookcase in the corner. Loads of art on the wall there and heaps of stuff in the corner on the wall are my home phone, (yes I have one! How about that!?) the island intercom system (announces important things to all of us at its discretion like when the dentist is coming over and if a ferry is canceled or delayed. So helpful when I can understand it I'm sure.) and a phone that allows me to talk to whomever may be at my door when they ring. The doors separating the rooms are sliding of course and can be opened wide or totally closed leaving the spaces separate. I love the sliding doors in my house and there is also one that separates the kitchen and the entry way. Really does wonders for heating/cooling quickly.

Now into the bed/yoga/whatever room. My bed is there folded up on the right side. I left it out so you could see it, but it can be put away in a jiff and the room becomes a bit more spacious. There is a table over in the corner which serves as a night stand/dinner table/computer workspace and myriad other purposes. Nothing too exciting here.

And here it all is from the back door. Oh and yes, all of the lighting is FLORESCENT! and I LOVE it! (sarcasm does not usually work via written communication, sorry.)

Here is the room from the kitchen. You can see the AC/heater on the wall above the couch and no, I never sit on the couch. It folds out into a futon (American idea of futon) style sleeper, but it is not that comfortable. The floor is better in my opinion.

Okay and finally the art studio. A wonderful space to get lost in on any night that allows me a little time to escape. Directly above this space are the lines that I hang my laundry on to dry and opposite this side of the porch is where I store my recycling ect. Not a ton of space but I'm makin' it work.

That's it for me. Off to the studio for awhile before I have to climb back onto the floor for bed and work again tomorrow. Life is flowing full throttle here in Naru!

Be well tomodachis!

feeling good

2010-03-28T01:24:00.003+09:00

went to fukue for the day to see mates there and enjoy being away from everyone i know here. had the most delicious vegetarian lunch at the local co-op and got a massage there as well. the massage was 90 minutes long and cost about $35. the only draw back was that i had to leave all of my clothes on. yes, it was weird, but i guess that is the japanese way and i'm not too keen on it, but it still felt nice to be massaged. when i come home this summer i want mama mel's hands on bare skin. is that too much for a girl to ask?

boat pose

2010-03-27T21:59:00.000+09:00

this was my attempt at boat pose while on a boat today...tricker than you think. it was a beautful day in my japan

and one more...

2010-03-26T11:55:00.000+09:00

and this one is surely my favorite. watch out for the bubble that can grow in your tummy. you want to go with the down arrow if you find yourself in that situation! thank goodness for these pictures, or there might be bubble people running rampant around here...

more entertainment

2010-03-26T11:53:00.000+09:00

the message is clear here too right?! if you drink and smoke cigarettes you will get a large red X on your shoulder and your cigarette smoke will begin to appear as if it is a conversation bubble in which you should say something clever with...

entertainment

2010-03-26T11:51:00.000+09:00

this is the dangerous tidepool that one might be swept into if they are not careful about what they eat here in japan!!!!!! i found this little illustration in one of the health books that was left in my desk from one of the many gaijin who have held the english teacher position before me. these illustrations are really in line with what most signs and things are like here. they are kind of exaggerate what they are trying to say and in doing so usually the point is lost, at least on this gaijin. the green water is dangerous and the blue water is where life is easy. Watch out for the green water!!!!!!

one more

2010-03-26T10:55:00.000+09:00

this is a really bad shot of two of my kyoto sensei's who are leaving naru. they closed the night of dinner, drinking, karaoke, and more drinking with a sweet japanese song that i cannot remember the name of. the man that is on his knees watching them (if you can make him out) is our kocho sensei, the principal. he was the drunkest guy there and must have smoked at least two packs of cigarettes during dinner and singing. a lively guy with loads to say about everyone's singing abilities.

it was another good night and more sad goodbyes. 13 kinds of fish were presented at dinner. leave it to the japanese to give you that much fish in one sitting. almost all of it was delicous too. exciting stuff.

off to finish up friday and hopefully to have a night at home...hermits unite!

a surrpise ending

2010-03-25T11:04:00.000+09:00

holy moses march is almost gone! what a wild, wonderful, crazy, heartbreaking and fantastic month it has been. the cherry bloosoms are starting their show here and are waiting for a sunny day to make a real spectacle of themselves. i cant wait. it has been rainy in naru this week and today the sky the sea and the mountains at my favorite viewpoint from school are all the same hazy shades of violet and blue. in the absence of the sun it is still a spectacular sight and takes my breath away to think that i live here. yesssssss.

yesterday marked the real end of school here in naru for the year. i know that graduation was awhile ago now, but the rest of the students had to carry on with lessons while those who graduated ran around town playing all day. not fair right? well, i dont think many of them really mind because they all know that their turn will come soon enough. all of the kids will still come to school almost everyday while they are on "break" to have club practice and to study. its not a real vacation, but then again they never really have a real vacation here, so again, they are used to it. i, on the other hand, am not. and now i am going to have to find ways to fill my days for the next two weeks without teaching anything or anyone, because us teachers still have to come to school as well. this means i will be doing a lot of reading and writing and internet searching and such. if anyone has something good i should be checking out, throw me a line. i offically have time to burn.

the end of the school year here signifies big changes for all involved in the system. all japanese teachers who work in public schools are government employees and are subject to being moved at the governments whim. usually in high schools that means 3-5 years for a teacher of being in one place and for administration 2-3 at the most. in jr high and elementary it is usually around 2-4 i think. but each year at this time the government or BOE (board of education) hands down its decisions on who will move and where they will go and teachers and administration have no choice in the matter. they either accept the charge and pack up and move in one weeks time or they say no and loose their job forever. there is no coming back as a teacher for the government if you refuse to take your new placement. its sounds really harsh and i agree that i think it is, but it also seems to be much harder for some people than others. some people really hate living on this tiny island and want to get back to the city as soon as possible, and for a few others who have been here for their 5 years and now have to move on, you can tell they are awfully sad to be going. i am not subject to this moving and will only have to endure the ifs and maybes of being repositioned if i choose to leave. i am lucky. two teachers and our kyoto sensei (which is japanese title for the vice principal) will be moving to new schools in the next few days. keep in mind they just found out they were moving last friday and i think that they are expected to report to their new jobs by next friday. two weeks to move life. ive done that before and it sucks, but they do this all the time, every 2-5 years. super suck.

so last night was the goodbye party for them and it was nice. i am beginning to get the hang of making small talk at these things and have even begun to remember some of the japanese etiquitte which can be quite complicated and requires me to always be thinking and observing. the dinner was fantastic and consisted of nine, yes nine kinds of fish (king crab legs of COURSE!) all prepared in different ways, some sort of raw looking beef, (which i happily gave to the sensei sitting next to me) rice and a delicious strawberry/caramel/pudding sort of desert. top notch i'd say. looking forward to doing it all over again with the jr high/elementary teachers here tonight. i will keep you posted on dinner and try to remember my camera this time...

there is a great deal of hung over people around this office today, and i am so happy that i am NOT one of them. no one is saying a word about the transgressions that took place last night, they are all just getting on and muddling through. the high point of the day so far for me though (and it is a REALLY high point) is that i found a western toilet today!!!!!!!! its in the student bathroom which i never use, but did today because our teacher bathroom was being cleaned (by one of the teachers, we all take turns rotating weekly.) what a surprise when i opened the door to the last stall and saw that tall toilet smiling back at me. it really did make me laugh out loud and do a little dance right there in the bathroom. it's the little things in life folks that really keep us excited about living. today my excitement is a toilet. halli-jah-lu-la!

sorry to include so much info about pottys on this blog to those of you keeping up. i will try to avoid the subject from here on out. try...

mata ie ma sho! (see you later!)

beth

the old and new

2010-03-18T13:10:00.001+09:00

there was a small interaction that i had today with one of my students that pretty much sums up the whole of japanese life and the way things are for me here.

i was on my way out of the jr/elementary school and heading back to the high school to eat lunch and finish my afternoon there. as i came down the last flight of stairs i noticed that quite a few of my 10th grade students were coming down the stairs with me (they have music class at the jr high) and one of them stopped and gave a hankerchief to one of my 9th graders. i stopped him for a quick second and asked 'what were you doing back there?' he answered that she had 'forgotten' her hankerchief and he was just returning it. with a big dose of sarcasim i said 'you mean you were giving your girlfriend your hankerchief' and he just smiled back at me and pressed his index finger to his lips, 'shhhh'. I was stunned. this is the first time that any of my students have admitted to having feelings about one another (I know there have to be loads of secret girlfriend/boyfriends in my classes). i smiled back at him and we walked out the door. next he asked me a question, 'do you know 'linkin park'? i told him i did, though i dont really know their music i know that they are a popular american rock band. he told me that it was his favorite and that he really loved them. woah. he had my head reeling. he had in under one minute of interaction combined the tradition of old with the excitement of new.

what high school boys do you see innocently handing hankies to their girlfriends in america? the answer is none. they dont do that, but they did in 1950 perhaps. and how many high school kids are crazy about rock music, eyes blazing with excitement when you mention their favorite band's name? all of them. that is what a typical american high school kid does. how odd to witness that mix of new and old in that student, but how cool it was too.

this is a prime example of life here though. they are mixing the new, hip stuff of the western world in with their lives that are steeped in culture and rituals. it is fun to pull it all apart and to see how it fits together again and to learn about all of the old and new through observation, language, ceremony and the occasional lesson from one of my english speaking japanese friends.

what a joy and a privilege it is to be here. i did a quick count in my head the other day as to how many days i have left here and it is about 500 now. i cant wait to see what happens in those days and how far from what i am now that i will be when they are through.

ends and beginnings

2010-03-16T13:53:00.001+09:00

along with every other thing that they do differently here the japanese have graduation for students at all levels in the spring. my high school kids graduated two weeks ago and today my jr high and 6th grade students graduated as well. it is a VERY different ceremony than what i am used to experiencing in the states and totally formal and pretty rigid if you ask me. loads of standing up and bowing and sitting down and standing up and on and on. loads of speeches from people who the students may or may not recognize and a few somber little songs thrown in for fun. all of the students are required to participate as graduation falls on a school day. the most touching part of the ceremony was when a few representatives of each graduating class gave short inspriational messages to the other classes. in return a few representatives from those classes stood and gave glad parting and congratulatory words to them. most teachers were crying but i have to be honest, i didnt really try that hard to understand what they were saying like i did during the high school ceremony (tear jerker!) because i was facing a huge window that had the most wonderful view of outside and i was totally daydreaming about laying on the beach here really soon. hey, you would probably have been drawn to do the same thing if you were in my place. we were able to clap at the end as the students who were graduating were leaving, that was my favorite part because i could move again without being the fidgety gaijin. and so the school year wraps up here in naru and it feels, well, really weird. it could have to do with the fact that i walked past of few of my graduating students on the way to school this morning as they were packing their bags and noticed that they were including a straightening iron in their things; it was two of my 9th grade boys. oh japan you just always throw a curve ball dont you?

happy spring to all of you and happy birthday to my beautiful momma. her birthday is tomorrow and it is an epic one. im so glad that i got to see her last week along with all of the rest of my family and hold them each for a moment and catch up on life. though we gathered under very sad circumstances we all managed to speak of and share in the joy that our beloved KC had shared with each of us in her life. what a wonderful thing to have such beautiful people inside and out in my life.

im blessed beyond belief

love and life and change

2010-03-04T12:14:00.000+09:00

it is with a heavy heart that i write this short blog note. the long 28 hour journey to Texas has begun for me now. i type this from the airport in fukuoka which is a ferry/taxi/plane ride from my little island. i'm off to meet my family for a few days and to celebrate the life of one of the most golden-hearted women i have ever had the privilege of loving; my grandma KC. it was her time and it is a good thing that she has gone to be with my grandpa john and dance with him again, but our selfish human nature has many of us sad here as we miss her joyful being.

i hope all of you remember to love each moment that you can.

re entry back to being a non-gaijin is feeling weird and wonderful all at once. i kind of miss my island already though...

is this right?

2010-02-25T15:16:00.000+09:00

i am grading said tests from last post. there is a fill in the blank question that i made for the kids to answer which reads 'The one thing that people do not eat in Bethland is __________?' and the answer is meat. i read a passage for the kids that i wrote about an imaginary place of my own with my own rules. they did the same exercise a few weeks ago so they are familiar with the idea of my own place and rules ect. i have one student who did pretty well on the test, actually has one of the highest grades and if i give her the points for what she put in the blank she will earn a 64%.

her answer?....'cat and dog'.

what is a girl to do? in my heart this TOTALLY feels like the right answer, but really this is one of the answers on the test with the highest percentage of correct answers. granted, most students have answered 'meet', but i am giving it to them.

still, i think i am just going to say that she wins today. isnt it okay to just grant one of these students that little win for the day? good for you megumi, that is 100% correct. we do not eat cat or dog in bethland.

sneaking a snap

2010-02-25T13:21:00.000+09:00

im indulging all of you out there with this little pic of me in my staffroom at the high school, florescent lights and all! notice no body else is around?...yes, they are all at a meeting and are apparently discussing what is healthy food. that is all that my supervisor told me before everyone left me here alone. this is pretty typical and i have gotten used to being alone in here sometimes. if you know me, you know that being alone is just fine with me. but i stole the opportunity to show you where i work as taking a picture of the room when people are watching is just, well, weird, at least weirder than most things i am doing here for the moment.

i gave my second grade students (11th graders to you and me) their final english exam of the year today. i dont think one of them finished it and they all just looked totally defeated when i handed them out. my supervisor told me that i had to make this one significantly harder than the last one, because the students did too well on the last one. yes, that is just what i was thinking too! "lets make it so hard that they will all fail!" he thought i was serious when i said this and smiled in agreement. ouch. this is the japanese way. i am about to start grading them and feel sorry for them already. wow what a strange reality this is that i have chosen to live in.

hope all of you are getting good marks in life out there. ganbatte!

beth

...watchin the tide roll away

2010-02-23T09:35:00.000+09:00

okay, i am lame. i cant get the image to turn, i confess to knowing next to nothing about layout on this blog, but at least i am tending to it right? i will figure it out one day when someone comes to my rescue and offers to help. but for today, this is a sideways shot of one of the bays on my way to class. not a bad way to start my day...happy tuesday everyone.

whats up with the bento?

2010-02-17T14:52:00.002+09:00

i have had so many people ask me about what i am eating here and somehow i keep forgetting to share. as i was diving into my lunch today i thought about this and actually paused to take a quick picture of my lunch. this is what i eat for lunch usually five days a week. though i have tried other things this is just the easiest and there is a bit of variety in it each day, though the rice and fish remain the same. i will try to tell you a bit about my lunch (hiru gohan, which translates to mid day rice) now.

this is called a go-hyaku en saba bento or ５００￥鯖弁と。　(i can actually read that too if you can believe it. the first four characters are kanjis; yen, fish, blue, ben and the last symbol is hiragana for 'to'. yes, it is that hard to read and yes it is one of a very few things that i can read. it has to do with food, major motivation for me to learn!) so what this breaks down into meaning is that the meal costs 500 yen (around five dollars) and has saba fish as its main staple. what this is is, starting with the rice and working clockwise;

*white rice, run of the mill stuff. nothing special or fancy. it comes from a rice cooker because EVERYBODY here cooks their rice in one except me. mine broke and i just dont see the need. it has an umeboshi on top of it which is the red ball you see there. it is a very sour plum and is traditionally eaten after the meal. i think it tastes like crap and ruins the lovely taste of lunch if you eat it at all. under the ume boshi are black sesame seeds on the rice and in the bottom left corner of the rice are some yellow pickles on a little plastic sheet of grass. these daikon radish pickles and are not too tasty either and i always leave them to the side. they again are sour but the japanese really believe in eating some pickles and umeboshi after a meal as they feel it aids digestion.

*there are four different items in the square above the rice on the left side. two of them are types of komaboko, which is japanese style fish patties. these are delicious and i have yet to find a type of komaboko that i dont like. sometimes there are shredded veggies in them too and they come in all shapes and sizes. seen here is a pink/white half-moon shaped one and a brown triangular one. in this square there are also some vegetables (potato and carrot) which have been boiled in sweet dashi (fish stock). they are quite delicious also.

*next is the main event, the saba fish. it shares its square with two other items from let to right which are, tamagoyaki (japanese style omlette. yum!) and a few pea pods served tempura style (battered lightly and fried quickly. very yum.) the saba (pacific mackerel) is served next to this. i always get two small bits of fish that are prepared pan fried with soy. it is quite good and has few bones to sort through. i have managed to get to know this fish quite well and can not only tell exactally where the bones will be but can also remove sans fingers using only my chopsticks. yup, im just that good.

*under the saba is a quarter of a mikan. these are wintertime japanese fruits that taste a bit like an cross between an orange and a mandarin fruit back home. they are really easy to peel, come into season about december and are pretty cheap eats. you can still buy a bag of about six or seven of them here on the island for less than an american dollar. they grow everywhere so most eaten in naru are local. sigh. good to know that. unfortunately though their season is almost done as i can tell by the slight decline in their taste in the last few weeks. i look forward to mikan season again next year...

*and lastly there is a little heap of boiled greens, served cold with mayonaise and sesame dressing (ohitashi). the greens are usually spinach but sometimes are traditional japanese greens. sorry i dont know the names of them yet.

*wash this all down with a nice cup of genmaicha tea (green tea mixed with toasted rice) and you have hiru gohan at its finest.

i will admit today that i ordered the 500 en bento for the first time in quite awhile. i usually get the 600 en bento which as you might guess is a bit bigger (more rice and more sides). i dont know what it was that made me go with only the 500 today, but i was still quite satisfied. maybe part of me does know that summer is around the corner...

so i hope this sheds a little light on what im eating here for those of you who are wondering. i will try to snap some more lunches in the coming days and give you the lowdown. i may even try to add a few of the japanese dishes that i have been cooking up in my own kitchen. they are coming along i am happy to say though it has not been easy. that is a whole 'nother post though.

OH and by the way for anyone that does wonder what else i am up to or culture stuff here. feel free to leave a question with me about what it is you are wondering about and i will do my best to report back on it. ask anything, god knows everyone here does!

itadakimas!

just say YES!

2010-02-16T14:19:00.001+09:00

i got myself into a bit of a pickle yesterday. due to my unbridled enthusiasm for saying yes to everything and everyone here i earned myself a name with my supervisor. i ask him daily if he needs any help and have only said yes when he wonders if there is something that i could help with or offer my expertise in. so he knew that all he had to do yesterday was say, "i have a favor to ask you" and i woud say yes before i knew what it was. well i did just that and even though he has never asked me specifically for a favor before (this should have been a tip off) i jumped at having a project to fill my down time yesterday.

he asked me if i could come up with some drawings for a test that he had to administer later that afternoon. really?? since when did he think i was an artist? did i ever tell him this in another context? how on earth did he think that i could do this? what he specifically wanted was three series of pictures. each series was to have four pictures a piece and each was an answer to a multiple choice question where they had to understand the question (in english of course) so they could choose the right picture. the kicker is though that each picture measured 2cm by 1.5cm. i had to fit people and actions into these small dimensions and make them clear enough that students could distinguish what they were. um, okay.

i did the first series with a bold attempt at realism. roundish bodies for people and on them clothing with distinguishable characteristics. it was bad. really, really bad. these people were not looking too healthy or happy in any regard, but alas i pushed on to continue the task at hand.

needless to say, the next series was seeming even more daunting now. i thought about trying again at small life forms that resembled real people or close cousins to humans and decided that i just didnt care. i am not an artist, i never told him that i am an artist and if he is going to ask me to do this an hour before he needs them he is going to happily accept whatever my measley pencil scribbles down. and so it was, the rest of my drawings were sticks with smiles. i handed them over to him with great pride (if you cant make it, fake it, right?!) and told him i hoped he liked them. he just kind of looked at me and gave me an "im kind of embarassed for you" smile. i didnt care at all. being embarassed at school is so six months ago...

and i write this all happily from my new (new old, old) computer at my desk in my elementary/jr high school office. it is grand to be here with people who talk to me and acknowledge my presence. that is not always happening at my high school and seems to be kind of the norm around here with my other english teacher pals. i may never understand just why that is so.

post valentine hearts and hugs,
beth

get up, stand up

2010-02-05T13:41:00.000+09:00

...and hope springs eternal here on my tiny japanese island! i am feeling heaps better now that i am on the tail end of this week and am happy to report that hearing has been restored to my ears and i am virtually pain free in all other ways. i knew it would just take some time, but man those were a few grumbly days.

today is a whole new ball game though, or at least so it seems. i (unknowingly) set in motion a few things a few days back when i was grumbly and had the attention of someone whom i knew both understood me and would maybe be a bit sympathetic.

she is mizokami sensei, my most favorite of all the teachers that i work with here. she teaches jr high and is a bad ass as far as japanese women go. first and formost, SHE SPEAKS and UNDERSTANDS english! what a thrill it is to be able to spend time with her and just talk about the many differences from here to there around the world and especially in japan. secondly she is smart (she also speaks swahili and has raised a lovely smart 5th grade girl on her own), sassy (she laughs with me daily and helps me with most everything i need) and breaks lots and lots of rules, but with loads of japanese flair. she has confided in me some great juicy secrets (which i will not be revealing here. jeez.) and they are sooooo not the japanese way of doing things. she is my hero around these parts.

anyway i mentioned to ms mizokami that my schedule around the naru school system seems odd to me and after showing her what i meant she agreed. can a girl get a little help around here?! i am based at the high school. this means that my main desk is there, i have a computer there (the one i type my blog on now), all of my files and lesson plans and such are there, i get my lunch there and most importantly i guess, i get paid from that office. but my contract with the nagasaki BOE (board of education) states that i am in charge of all of the children on this island so i must teach at the elementary and jr high too. i love that, no problem for me. the only trouble is that i teach usually around 10-12 classes a week at the jr high/elementary school and 2 classes a week at the high school. hmmmmm, this just seems a bit weird, right? i dont mind spending half of my days running (yes sometimes i do run) back and forth between schools and coming back inbetween periods for things i forgot or to order lunch or whatever. i would like to think that there could be something more streamlined worked out about this. and after opening my yap to ms. mizokami this week, apparently they agree.

as i approached the elementary/jr high this morning i threw an enthusiastic "ohiyo gozimasu" up to my principal who was having his morning smoke on the balcony outside the english classroom. he threw a nice one back at me and added in his most wonderful english "good morning". (i love it when teachers say good morning to me in english and this happens at the elementary/jr high more than the high school for sure.) i shuffled in and repeated my good mornings for the other teachers in the staffroom, gathered my things for class there on my desk and walked off with ms. mizokami to teach the 3rd graders about pronunciation. after class i was greeted back at my desk by kocho sensei (my principal) as he stood there smiling with a pas con (personal computer/laptop) in his hands for me. i wanted to hug him but knew that it would really freak him out so instead i did a lot of bowing interupted only by small bits of jumping, smiling and clapping my hands. i felt like a little kid at christmas and looked like it too im sure (though none of them have ever seen a little kid all excited on christmas. why would that happen here, its just another day remember?!). they were really welcoming me to their school and accepting me as one of their own. i got a computer on my desk and now i can sit and work there just like everyone else. plus they are reviewing my schedule now and deciding that i should spend more time at the elementary/jr high and plan on making it my home base a few days a week. wow. i feel like i have won some sort of gaijin contest. this is major headway people, this is CHANGing things that have been in place for who knows how long now and doing it without anyone being pissed at me or upset (yet). it is all thanks to ms. mizokami, who is by the way celebrating her birthday today as well.

so happy birthday today to mizokami sensei and to bob too. dont think that i forget that it was his special day today too just because im not back in the states at a reggae show tonight...no way no how.

happy days to all of you out there who bother to keep up with me also.

"you can fool some people some times, but you cant fool all the people all the time. so now you've seen the light. stand up for your rights."

a complaint from the gaijin

2010-02-03T15:48:00.001+09:00

i have made (almost now) through three days of work this week, all of which have been dreadful and long.

monday was the worst as i woke up after having a toss-turn-repeat night of sleep and then looked in the mirror before leaving (this is a small miracle in itself that i actually LOOKED in the mirror) and saw that i had rubbed my left eye into a messy patch of redness that looked somewhat reminicent of a smashed strawberry in my eye. great. i had a headache and couldnt hear out of my right left ear either because i had messed with it too much earlier in a q-tip vs. the itch in my ear war. clearly the q-tip won, but not in a good way. so this was the start to my day and i had an open class to look forward to in about an hour. (an open class is where every teacher and administrator in both schools on the island are invited to come and view your class and observe your teaching and then later ask you about it and give you feedback in a meeting. the meeting i found out about later, two minutes after it started. awesome.) so i put on my best japanese face and went with it thinking to myself while eyes were on my first graders and me "genki, genki, genki". luckily it was first grade and the energy of those kids is infectious, apparently even when you feel like H E double hockey sticks. all went fine and i managed to stay upright through the entire forty-five minutes only pausing a few times at desks to regain my balance and remember what word i needed to say so they could repeat it. needless to say i went right home after work and went to bed praying that everything would clear itself up and i would be better in the morning.

tuesday came with great sunshine and hope. i woke up feeling better, at least for the first fifteen minutes i was awake and then the headache and sneezing commenced. now there are symptoms of allergies and and then there are just fits of sneezing and being plugged up that one cannot even fathom could really occur. i managed to suffer the later for most of tuesday and boy was it a great day! oh, and my eye was still lookin pretty fruity and gnarly and getting gasps and awes from the teachers around me.

and now wednesday is almost through and i feel like i will be able to walk home without exhausting the rest of physical strength left in me for the first time this week. with my only aliments to report today being sneezing and needing to blow my nose every ten minutes at least and my ear that is throbbing with ache reminding me that i am foolish for attempting to scratch an itch in such a place, it has been a pretty good day. im certain that the ear will be fine in due time but i wont soon forget about the pesky itch that brought this on and i had to reload on kleenex at my desk this morning, again.

its times like these that a girl wishes she was not so far from home or comfort. im not really even sick, just a bit miserable with strange little ailments and it is making life seem much more japanese for the time being, i.e. "suck it up and get on with it. dont EVER complain". so dear, lovely readers i am doing the opposite, but out of sight from them and to you all who are more than familiar with hearing complaints from people daily. thanks for listening. im going to get back to sucking it up. dijabu desu. (im alright).

ps just so you know, if you ever visit, blowing your nose around anyone else is NOT okay. they dont do that here. imagine how popular i am in my staffrooms now!

love and hugs
beth

a few more differences

2010-01-26T14:00:00.001+09:00

it is still happening and i think that it will continue to happen for as long as i am here. the small differences in the ways that we go about life from the states to here is just startling. observing these seemingly small things that are kind of huge for an american in the flow of the 'wa' here is just something that leaves me scratching my head and wondering how and why we do things the way we do them back home and how they can do them differently here without a big fuss.

take for instance the regualrity of students and teachers alike carrying exact-o knifes. you know those razor sharp little knives that we use for crafts and such back home, yes those knifes, well they all have them here. i may be making it sound like they are all arming themselves, and really they are, but for entirely different reason; for EXACT cutting needs. when they do any art project here, big or small, if one person's eyes will see it or one hundred, they make it as precisely and nicely as possible. so naturally they need an exact-o knife so that they can get the job done and not have to make a big deal about 90 degree angles being off and whatnot. it makes sense now that i see it in action everyday. what really struck me about it though was entertaining the thought of any 6th grade student back home with the same tool in their pencil case. well, honestly for the most part that is just scary. i WOULD NOT want to be the teacher in charge with everyone packin razor sharps in their desks. i just wouldnt. what about you? its a small difference here, but really its a big one, it kind of translates over to the disapline the kids have and the expectations that adults have of them.

this is seen again in the simple fact that when it is time for after lunch recess there is NO playground supervision. yes that is right. so your teacher wants to take a smoke break instead of watch you play soccer, what's the big deal? there is no big deal. the kids play and get along and there just isnt another option. kids here know that the wrath of the sum of adult figures in their lives would come down on them if they got into the kind of trouble that american kids seem to find at recess. they dont want that and life is easier when they all just get along, so they do. they make it look so easy. when i watch them play out my window it sometimes just blows my mind to think of all of the times that i had to interject an adult face/voice/words when watching my school kids in america play so they didnt beat the crap out of eachother or leave eachother out of play or a million other troublesome things that they seem to get into. that just does not happen here. wow.

the small can become the big in a lot of ways and though i get used to seeing it i dont know if i will ever be able to fully wrap my mind around how it works. i like it though. its good to be in japan.

today was a special day though, i did join my fifth and sixth grade students after lunch for a friendly little game of soccer in the warm sun. their homeroom teachers played as well and we used not one game ball but two. good times i say. as for all of the other kids running about outside, what were they up to you say?...who cares!

sendin love and sunshine from my island to yours

beth

stumptown back porch

2010-01-25T17:34:00.000+09:00

many thanks go out to a little goddess i know who hails from pennsylvainia, but sends all of her love to me via portland, or. she sent me stumptown coffee for christmas and i got to enjoy it on my back porch. that is what i call a real friend. there is little or no "real" coffee to speak of here. they're really into tea. who knew!?

the molehill is a mountain

2010-01-22T11:07:00.000+09:00

most of you out there who have been reading about my wanderings thus far are familiar with tanaka-san by now. the sweet little office lady who thinks i am a super-model, clever american girl. yes, she always has me smiling and keeps me guessing as to what she might say or do in one day's time. today we shared a nice little laugh (at my expense...what's new!?) and i thought that i would pass it on.

i walked into the office to order lunch. (i have mentioned about how sweet it is to get little bento lunches delievered everyday to the office made by local chef's including all of the best local fish and produce and costing a mere 600 yen, right? well if i havent then i should start telling you all about them in another post.) she asked as usual first about my outfit. (where is it from, what am i wearing underneath, how much did it cost...) i relayed that it was from america and that i was wearing a camisole of sorts underneath and that i bought it on sale (of course). she nodded and smiled at all the above and oohed and ahhhed at it coming all the way from san francisco! oh la la! we then moved onto what i would be having for lunch. a big question some days when i just cant decide between chahan, saba ben, omu rice, or a nice udon seto. i decided on omu rice ( a sweet little modern japanese dish) and turned to head out the door. but in traditional japanese style i didnt get out without a question about the tempurature for the day. samui? (it is cold. am i cold? its cold isnt it?) they ask this incesently and repeat this word as if it will somehow make the weather change if they say it enough times with enough distain. so far i dont think that it is working, but that is not stopping them. they do the same thing in the summer when it is hot (atsui! atsui! atsui!...). anyhow she asked and i told her (for the millionth time or so it seems) that i indeed am not cold and that the winter here in naru is simply lovely, in fact it is the warmest winter i have ever experienced in my whole life. i did add today though that my hands were cold and that my nose was a bit cold as well. (nothing new if you know me or my mom. we share a wonderful little circulatory system that does not quite make it to the tips of our noses, toes or fingers, hence making them cold all the time.) well, i should have known better. she whipped out the dictonary to try and figure out what circulation means and the like and i continued to try and let her know that i was not uncomfortable or suffering in any way by the 'cold' (weather here is in the fifties and sunny this week). we finally arrived at the right translation and after she grasped what my situation was she ran with it. my nose became a mountain in her joke (because my nose is indeed quite a bit bigger and longer than the average japanese nose) and the tip of it was freezing because that is what happens when mountains are so big, they get snow on the tops of them! my nose was the mountain with the snow and it was all making sense to her now. i endured her sharing this joke with the rest of the office staff and a few of my fellow teachers as they came in to order lunch as well. i will admit that it made me laugh, but for entirely different reasons. you just never know what is going to happen next.

on to bigger things. jr high class this afternoon and tackling questions and vocabulary for year end wrap up lessons. oh joy!

love from my mountain to yours

just breathing

2010-01-19T08:51:00.001+09:00

it feels like spring here, actually i have to keep convincing myself that it feels more like spring than summer, because naturally spring will be our next season, right? the sun in the evening is almost perfectly reminicent of lazy nebraska summer nights when it is just after supper time and the sun is finally giving up and falling down. this is the time when nothing is better than a nice porch beer and a view of the mighty fall. it really feels like that time of year here to me already here, but the only difference is that i get to watch the sun over the real sea and not the sea of corn. i dig it. the perfect spot for this view is just about five minutes via bike down the road from me and i can sit there and watch the sun play on the water until all the rainbow colors are gone and only blue and purple remain. im so lucky and this amazing sight helps me to remember that everyday.

speaking of seasons, there is this fantastic blog page that i found way back during thanksgiving time (is it really that long ago?) and i meant to share it with you all then, but of course got sidetracked (thats the nice way i will relate to you all how my brain normally functions) and forgot. this guy is super talented and clever with his artistry. any of you fellow tree huggers, oregonians or just art enthusiasts will really dig this page i think. tell me if im wrong...

niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/bio-diversity/

i'll leaf you with that.

;)

flowers in january

2010-01-18T16:20:00.000+09:00

a quick dose of sunshine for those of you in need. these are the pansies that are blooming outside the front door of my elementary school. flowers all year long, who knew how nice it was!?

global citizenship

2010-01-18T09:45:00.000+09:00

i like to think of myself as an optimistic person. i think most of you out there reading who know me well would agree, or at least i'd like to think so ;) it is not in my nature to want to find negativity in things but for some reason the recent earthquake in haiti has me shaking my head at the world around me. i do realize that haiti has little or nothing to do with anything japanese but this is after all my blog and it is on my mind so im going to write about it. if you dont want to read about it, dont. this is your warning if you dont want to hear about something that could be controversial stop reading now. in a lot of ways i feel like i shouldnt even be writing about this at all, but that is why i suppose i am. just airing the ideas in my head.

now i do not claim to be anything of an expert on the subject of haiti or world relations or even the proper responses to natural disasters, but i know that all of these things are on my mind and many other peoples minds now. a fairly natural response at this stage is to feel empathy for those who have lost loved ones and their homes and what few belongings they had in haiti, it is also natural i think to feel sadness at thinking of being in that same situation and our humankindness is set in motion. this is great, it may motivate us to give to charitable work that is happening there. this is great too, i think giving is part of us being world citizens and this is a wonderful thing. the people of haiti are very, very bad off at this point. this is a fact. but what is also a fact is that days, weeks, months and many, many years before this disaster struck their homes they were very, very bad off as well. haitian culture has a long history of slavery that it still practices. people live on little or nothing, have little or nothing and adjust to lives where suffering is the only thing that they can depend on being constant in their lives. these people for the most part are living lives that you and i shudder to even think about and shield our eyes from viewing when their truths are spewed on our tv screens. the suffering that those people are feeling there is hardly new to them.

how is it then that we should all be so worried about them now? where were we with our pocketbooks and warm hearts for the last who-even-knows how many years? why does it take something really horrific happening for us to focus our attention on those in need in this world? it feels so strange to me that it takes disasters for us to come together as a world community. what is holding us back from responding to each other like this on a regular basis? what is holding us back from keeping up on the quality of life being lived by our brothers and sisters who live in every corner of the world on a regular basis? i can guarantee that there are thousands of other people in the world who are experiencing agony as those in haiti are now, but they dont have news crews there to show the rest of us what is going on. dont they count? why arent we rushing to their aid too?

many of you know sam, my dear friend who is working now as a peace corps volunteer in the dominican republic. i have her to thank for a lot of the information that i do have on how the people of hispanola are living. its bad news, that is why she is there. she sent an email out (which was a sort of miracle that she could even get a connection that worked) a few days after the disaster letting all of us who love her know that she was okay. she also told us about the state of things post-disaster are looking like. there is no censor on the island television there that prevents the camera crews from filming the dead bodies everywhere and then broadcasting them to the public. they get to see what is really going on there, they dont get a sheltered version because it is too gorey. i cant even imagine.

i know im ranting a bit here but as i said before, it is just something that i feel that the whole world is paying attention to right now and the fact is, i dont have anyone to discuss it with. actually i have yet to talk to anyone on the island who even knows what happened, so maybe it is the world minus my island in japan. i applaud anyone who has taken action to help those in need now in haiti, but i challenge anyone who reads this to think about what you can do as a global citizen to help those living in misery on a regular basis. it should not take a catastrophe to bring us together. shouldnt we feel this compassion daily and reach out whenever we can, not just when it is in our faces? part of finding a solution is simply becoming aware and educating ourselves about the state of the world around us. this means getting uncomfortable and daring to dig into unsightly lives of those who live oceans away and stepping outside of our comfy little cocoons. i cannot claim to be aware of all of the suffering that is going on in the world. i do know that i want to push myself to be more aware of it all the time and to remember how lucky i am and to do what i can with my good fortune in life to help or bring awareness to those in need regularly. caring for a moment is nice but it will never be enough to fix the lives of people like those in haiti. it will take the world's populations making a habit of compassion and caring.

i have attached a link here of something im sure many of you have heard or read before. it is lesson that i taught to my senior high students this past week and will continue to talk with them about. it was extremely moving to share some of these figures with them and watch as they realized how lucky they were to be a part of the richest and most well off demographic in the world.

today i will meditate on the thought of global citizenship and what it means for me and all of us. i will do this knowing that i am not alone and that many of you reading already share this meditation with me.

namaste friends

howl like the good wolf you are

2010-01-17T10:04:00.000+09:00

I found this somewhere out on the web. I thought that it was pretty fantastic so i'm puttin it here for you all to enjoy as well. I'm off to Fukue for a fantastic matsuri today and should be enjoying some sumo and festival food as you all enjoy Saturday night cocktails back in the states. Be well...

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson
about a battle that goes on inside all people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two
wolves that dwell inside each and everyone of us.

“One is Evil.
It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed,
arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority,
lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

The other is Good.
It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,
kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity,
truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for
a minute, and then asked his grandfather:

“Which wolf will win ?”

The old Cherokee simply replied:
“The one you feed.”

nothing like a big piece of love

2010-01-12T16:10:00.000+09:00

i took this photo on my keitai (cell phone) today (and appologies, i cant figure out how to rotate the thing!) of this cake that one of my students created in art class that is being displayed outside of the teacher's room at the jr high/elementary school. at first it caught me because i thought that my student had flubbed up the english, but then i realized that they really got it right. there is an intentional play on words happening here and i love that one of them was clever enough to figure that out. a sweet little piece of art if you ask me...

"If you judge people, you never have time to love them." Mother Teresa

namaste friends,

beth

bring on another round

2010-01-08T13:02:00.002+09:00

just to let you all out there reading know. moments ago i turned in my recontracting papers to my supervisor. he read it over and when he realized what it was gave me a huge smile. it meas a LOT less work for him next year, thats why hes excited. it means another year of crazy japan living for me, thats why im excited. see you all stateside in august 2011...fingers crossed.

kanpai!

beth

and the winner is...

2010-01-08T10:21:00.001+09:00

me! apparently i am a big winner around here because i have been able to claim a day and a half of the sick days that were allotted to me in my contract this year. i have a cold. just your regular run-of-the-mill blowing of the nose every ten minutes and coughing up some gnarly tasting phlegm every few hours. nothing too life threatening or severe, im sure in fact that many of you back in the states have had these same symptoms this winter season and marched on right through work along with your other cold suffering collegues. its nothing, right? just what you expect from winter and how you deal with it. but it shouldnt surprise you by now to learn that this is soooooo not the way that it is dealt with here.

i came to work on wednesday feeling a bit under the weather as i said. though i knew that i was not super sick i thought seeing a doctor wouldnt hurt and its super super cheap to do so here, so what the hell, right? i walked into the main office of the high school and asked my favorite lady on the whole island for a bit of help. immediately she asked what she could do for me and i simply asked if maybe she could make me an appointment to see the doctor. whoa...she jumped into action whipping open her filing cabinet and retrieved a mask for me instructing me to put it on while dialing the hospital number with her other hand. as she waited for the phone to ring she asked the principal if it was okay if she took to the hospital and she granted her the priveldge no problem. get the sick girl out of here was really the idea. so moments later i was whisked three blocks away in tanaka-san's little car to the hospital and ushed into a private room with a nurse ready with her thermometer and japanese translation book. i was asked lots of questions and answered them with broken broken japanese as i could. the doctor arrived shortly after and asked a few more questions (she speaks okay english, okay) and stuck a dipstick deep into my nose to test me for the dreaded infruenza!!!!, which i knew i didnt have but wanted them to know so i obliged to their test. it came back negative but at the end of the visit i walked out of the hospital with FOUR different medications and strict instructions to rest and not come back to work. tanaka-san had been on the phone as asked permission for me to take the rest of the day off and the next and my pricipal okayed this as well. nice.
now i have enjoyed a few days at home sleeping off this cold and catching up on the latest american movies and just being able to relax and enjoy in japan for awhile. when i returned today i knew though that i would need to mask up for the fear was in all of my collegues eyes that i was still infected and might spread the nastiness to them. my supervisor passed me a sheet handed down to him from my principal and vice principal that was granting me a day and a half of sick leave. he told me that i was very lucky that they were giving me the sick days and not taking them out of my nenkyuu or days off for the year. he then told me that he has NEVER been granted a sick day. jeez, jeez, jeez, whoa, whoa, whoa!
there is just a certain work ethic that runs deep in this country. though they are scared to death of being sick, they usually work through it and mask up so that no one will be in danger (this makes me laugh out loud) of catching it. every collegue that i work with who has been sick this year will show up and perform whatever is necessary to get done for the day and THEN go home and feel better. they might take another day of nenkyuu if they are really feeling bad, but most times they show up the next morning ready to get back at it. these people live to work it seems and it makes me feel so bad most days knowing that i am the last to arrive in the mornings (or close to the last) and the first to leave every afternoon. i work with teachers who leave for school when i get up in the morning and dont return until after i have eaten dinner and been relaxing for hours. it is really so weird but i am learning that it is just their way.
so today i tell you i am the big winner around here. seriously. i got the magic sick days that no one else seems to be able to use, but i know that they all have. being gaijin here has its good points sometimes. *cough, cough*

be well back home, spring is around the corner!
big hugs and warm love to you all,
beth

pictures!

2010-01-07T14:12:00.003+09:00

the back side of the tori shinto entrance on new years. it was an amazing place to be and sooo busy.

so here is the busy scene that was witnessed on the stairs leading up to the entrance gate.

this was the first buddhist temple that we visited after midnight. it was much quieter and mellow than the rest of the stops that evening. very zen.

this is the entrance up to the main gates of the shinto shrine where we threw money and clapped and bowed. a super hoppin spot and the vendors were there in droves. it was pretty entertaining.

and here i am ringing the bell at first buddhist temple. the temple was high above the city and sported an amazing view.

this is spectacles bridge. the most famous bridge in nagasaki and it is waaaay old and has been rebuilt a few times due to destructive flooding. right outside and down the street from the hostel where i stay when i'm in town.

this is some signage outside a yakitori restaurant in chinatown district. these are a fine example of the sort of english that can be seen everywhere in this country. never fails to bring a good laugh. nothing like a nice scorch bird. mmmmm...

some really sweet looking old guys playing chess in the park. spent plenty of time watching them and shooting the birds and kids that were playing there. a lovely new year's day in nagasaki.

the gate of the park entrance. hey, it's a city park, why not go a little fancy?!

this little girl chased the pigeons for a good hour. she was sooo excited every time they would gather and she could bum rush them. i had a blast watching her.

here is the park entrance gate from my perch on the other side of the park. the gates to enter the chinatown district are right behind them.

and here i am. wearing the lovely house clothes provided by the hotel in ioujima. people wore these to dinner, to the onsen, to ping pong and to breakfast. i just wore them in the room, maybe next time i'll suck it up and wear them outside.

just a bit of the buffet spread that was encountered at dinner. soooo overwhelming and more fresh fish then i have EVER seen in my life. it was really a wonderful way to start vacation.

and to top it all off...grey jello! that's right folks. there are just too many things to even mention that happen here that are so far out of the spectrum of what i am used to. this is just a fine example. no i did not try it. what flavor do you suppose grey is?! i didn't really want to find out that much and thought that i probably wouldn't be able to identify it anyhow. i will mention here that grey is the color of most chewing gum here. it is mint flavor. yum, grey food!

watch out!

2010-01-05T10:46:00.000+09:00

this is what most people look like here when flu season arrived. it doesnt mean you are sick, just being cautious. i think its a little nuts!

the year of the tiger has commenced

2010-01-05T10:31:00.000+09:00

happy new year!!!! okay, so the new year kind of crept up on me, much like a tiger on her prey. it is indeed the year of the tiger here and i am feeling a renewed sense of wonder with life as new challenges arise. as i am sure that my holiday time was much different than anyones back in the states i will ramble here about my end of year holiday:

i had the lovelist of holidays over my new year break and spent one night in ioujima (a little island just a 20 minute ferry ride from ohato harbor in nagasaki). it was beautiful and calming to spend a night right on the sea. for a quick fix in life nothing beats it.

after one night in ioujima i spent five beautiful, lazy nights with the good folks at the akari hostel near the temple district in nagasaki. there are always lots of travelers coming and going day in and day out there from all over the world and it is always fun to meet them and share a cup of coffee and a little chat. so many people dazzled by the culture and life that is japan. it is great to share common and contrasting experiences with them.

i hadnt really made plans for new years eve when i came and did the whole 'see what life brings' sort of thing. turns out that one of my gaijin friends who lives the next island over was in nagasaki with her friend from the states and so ben and i met them new years eve at the local gaijin bar for some magic. its a local hot spot called the 'crazy horse' and there are plenty of crazy things going on in there on any given night. we had checked it out the night before eve just to make sure that it would be open (many, many things close for new years here and for a few days that follow. when i got home EVERYTHING in naru was closed. EVERTHING.) and we happened upon an all japanese beatles cover band. let me tell you that you have never heard 'hard days night' until you have seen five (yes, five. i know its not right, but they didnt seem to care) 50-odd something's jamming it like it's going out of style. i didnt know whether to laugh or sing along and so i did both. i knew dad would be proud that i knew the lyrics better than the lead singer. it's true and at one point after singing 'nowhere man' he covered the mic and leaned over to ask me 'what is nowhere man meaning?'. i translated as well as i could but told him that it wasnt supposed to make perfect sense anyhow. i asked him 'wakaru?' (do you understand) and he smiled and flashed me a big peace sign. right on man, right on. but, new years night there were more and different rock-n-rollers in the house and we were all singing and playing and just having a real dandy time. midnight came without a countdown or champange toast, but quickly after the bar owner, Yubo, asked us all if we were ready to go. sure!, where are we going? without really understanding i hopped into a cab with my two gaijin girls and my new japanese friend Takeshi and whizzed off to a nearby buddhist temple. turns out once we got there that our cabbie had taken us to the wrong one to meet the rest of the gang from the bar. it is tradition for japanese people to visit a shrine or a temple in the first hours of the new year, or the first few days of the new year and so the place was packed! at the buddhist temples there are huge bells outside with huge wooden ringers that you swing back and make the biggest bang (just one) that you can followed by bowing (duh!) and making a wish. after we realized that indeed we were at the wrong temple and had all had a go at the bell we hopped in another cab and got to the right one where we met the rest of the gang from the bar. the next was the biggest buddhist temple in the city and there were a huge, elaborate, golden shrines set up inside where monks were chanting and praying. we silently entered and took seats to observe the chanting and to light some insense offering prayers of our own for new years blessings. i was not able to take pictures in such a sacred place but let me tell you that what i saw and felt in there i will never forget in my whole life. it was a truly moving and awakening experience for us all. after we exited the sanctuary we were usshered into a room where we were given tea and soup by sweet old women in house aprons. i thought that was were we would end the night, but oh, wrong again. after moments of savoring the delicious (vegetarian!!!!!, buddhists, right!?) soup our leader and his wife got up and told us we had another stop. one more cab ride and we were let out into the biggest crowd of the night. we were at the biggest shinto shrine in nagasaki and it was hoppin! wide staircases up through tori gates were filled with people, so much so that there were policemen on duty to let just the right amount of people up at a time. given our chance we climbed the stairs and worked our way to the open shrine where we threw coins and bowed and clapped offering our thanks and recieving the blessings that the new year may bring. then we were offered small dishes of spiced sake and shown to the reception area. this was all outside mind you and on the other side of the offering and sake lines there were all kinds of vendors set up ready to please a slightly-buzzed and very cheerful new years crowd. you could get everything from chocolate covered bananas to takoyaki to cheese on a stick and beers to boot! what a way to end the night im tellin ya! we enjoyed all the above for many moments and had a good time sitting around heaters sharing with friends new and old, japanese and american. it was a really wonderful way to ring in the new year and i feel so blessed to have been a part of it.

as for resolutions of the new year sort i didnt make any that night. i didnt even really think about it. it is just not what they do and so i kind of forget about it. i have thought about it though now that we are a week into the year and i have decided that i want to be more creative and to be more willing to share my creativity with the world this year. i want to be not so uptight about sharing my writing (see, yes i have already begun right here!) and paint however i chose and sing when people are listening and speak and listen when the time is right. these are my resolutions, i hope you are making some of your own that are challenging and fun.

be well friends and make 2010 great in your own ways. thanks for staying in touch,
beth

ps-pictures later, im at work now and dont have access to them. though i am back at school i dont have lessons for another week and that leaves me a lot of time to catch up with all of you. dont be surprised if i get to a bloggin a few more times this week.

catching up on photos...

2009-12-15T21:24:00.001+09:00

a shot of the island with previously mentioned hawk flying above. they really are everywhere. (photo by benjamyn rivers)

another shot of the island on a grey-er day. not every day in paradise is sunny...just most of them.

a sunset shot down by one of the harbors.

yes, i have been fishing and yes i am learning how to gut and deal with the aftermath once it is off the hook. not pretty but i guess this is how it's done. sucking it up as sho would say...(and yes this is the extent of my kitchen. huge, i know.

it might sound kind of morbid, but i have been hanging out in cemeteries a lot since i have been in japan. what can i say, there are just a lot of them everywhere. they aren't really cemeteries though, they are just shrines to the dead here by which all kinds of things are placed. flowers like most of us are familiar with but a fanta soda or asahi beer are not uncommon either. i guess it is whatever the dead's taste was. anyhow, this is a shot from one of my favorite shrine spots here during the last full moon. it was really breathtaking how the reflection was playing on the marble up there.

and here are the christmas lights! they really are quite impressive for a tiny island like this one where everyone will work on christmas day, few if any gifts will be exchanged on that day and the kids all laugh when you say santa claus. i guess they really think that american kids are suckers for believing in him. i like their moxie!

this is the main street in naru. you can see this was rush hour as there was a car flying past as i took this photo.

oh! and there is the only traffic light on the island again. wow, how unusual, it's green...!

hope you all enjoy the little catch-up. i will be more diligent. love and hugs, beth

one with the birds.

2009-12-10T09:14:00.000+09:00

"like so many robins, like so many hawks, like so many lovebirds, like so many stalks. a little swallow will tell you, without using heart wrentching, misleading words. when we are inhuman, we are one with the birds."

there isnt a whole lot else that i wanted to post today other than i am thinking about everyone that i miss and love back home these days...a lot. i think i owe it to the time of year and how different it feels to be in another place but not be sharing the space that feels full of holiday cheer, overeating for no good reason and presents galore. none of that will be happening here and im not entirely sad about it, but still there is that something. i cant put my finger on it at this moment, but know that if i have cared to keep up with you at all since i have been here, i am and have been thinking about you in the last few weeks and will keep thinking about you and missing you for the next month or so.

have i bothered to mention the hawks on this island? never in my life have i seen so many birds overhead or gotten to know them as intimately as i do these birds now. their japanese name calls them black something-or-others, but they are brown hawks and they dominate the sky here. walking down by the harbor last week i stopped to count them quickly (just the ones that were in the harbor area mind you) and i quickly was at 25 before i could take another breath. their shrill little screams are becoming something that i look forward to hearing their calls with great anticipation on my walks to school as they do a great job of blending into the buildings that they perch on when the sky is grey and with their little screetches i can find them easily. its almost as if they are announcing themselves and letting the other birds and me know that "this is my spot, dont even think about coming over here". i have watched families of hawks teaching their young to fly, hunt and swirl through the skies. i have watched them dip, dive and soar through the naru skies and spent long thoughtful moments watching them brace themselves and lean into the wind with focus and strength. it is truly amazing to get as close to these creatures as you can here. one day when i am far from here and i hear the cry of a hawk, i will be transported back to this place and this time. their presence here is adding to the richness of this experience and i feel so priviledged to be observing their lives. i am convinced it is my karmic return for all of the people who are observing my life here.

happy days everyone. lots of love to each of you.
mata ai masho

holy hole in the doughnut batman!

2009-12-07T11:16:00.001+09:00

(im really all over the place today...just a warning.)

i just had something occur to me that i hadnt given much thought to until right now; my older sister is really going to be old this year. sorry ab, but thirty all of a sudden just feels really old and really close. thirty is like a landmark and i am not that much behind her, which is why it is always hard for me to watch her have a big birthday; because i know that my day to be there is not that far behind.

so thinking about this and knowing how fast life moves i once again began reflecting on some things about being here and about life in general. its more and more important all the time to enjoy what is in front of you each day and to take it for what it is. i have been reading some of the meditations of the dalai lama at work and am really beginning to be able to take myself out of places of pain, hurt or fear and replace them with light, love and hope. the mind is an amazing thing if we care to take the time to harness the power that it possesses. i like the challenge of being able to do this on a pretty regular basis as it is easy to get freaked out here about everything that is going on, but it is also becoming relatively easy to control that anxiety and to turn it into wonder and education. the tests i get put through daily here are unlike any i have ever thought were possible in life and i can feel my mind and spirit benefiting from every day that i spend growing and learning. im doing my best to soak it up and suck it up. but sucking it up is no longer necessary when i remember to enjoy even the things that seems painful, as they will prove to be great lessons one day soon. every day is different and still the same thing applies; its all about attitude.

yesterday i enjoyed a beautiful day (even though it was a bit chilly and overcast. hey im from portland and nebraska. its going to have to get ALOT colder here for me to start complaining.) in fukue (sorry fukue friends, it was a covert misson and i didnt tell any of you i was coming) riding a rented bike (well its really not renting it when the guy gives it to you for free, is it? score one for kindness.) all over the BIG island and having myself a great time looking at the beauty around me and the admiring all of the strangeness that each shop i stopped in held for me. among the treasures i found yesterday were a five dollar sweater that FITS!, avacados (its been months since i have seen them!) and a nice bottle of spanish wine that was not too expensive at all. a hell of a day if you ask me.

today is much sunnier and my mood is high for the beginning of the week. im wearing my new sweater (its orange and is really going over well today i must say, and the fact that i got it so cheap is REALLY impressing all of my coworkers, male and female alike!), having avacados for lunch and have learned some more of my student's names this morning already. it really feels like i am getting life figured out when i can look at one of them and see the letters or even the katakana of their names in my mind and say it out loud. each new name i learn is a word that i have never heard of before. i rambled off a dozen or so names to mom when i skyped with her and dad the other morning/night and she thought i was making them up. i assure you mom, these names are no joke and once you get the hang of them you forget all about the joe's and mary's back home and replace them with ryuske's and kurumi's and ayaka's. aren't those some wonderful names?

on a very strange side note (sorry to overuse strange here, but it is just always applicable lately and so i am really using it for all it is worth); the main street of naru is TOTALLY decked out for christmas. i mean it puts many of the neighborhoods that i have lived in back in america to shame! i will get out and take some pictures, but i am telling you, these people had to of spent a whole day or afternoon or weekend (where was i?) putting up lights and moving signs and nani, nani, nani. its amazing and i am vowing to take a bike ride through it every night from now until christmas (when i get off work on christmas i will take one final ride through im sure too!). just so odd considering i have heard so little about them celebrating it in the ways that i am used to. take for instance the fact that i am working on both christmas and christmas eve. i dont really think that anyone here has ever even heard of christmas eve, and working on the holiday seems to be par for the course. just another day, no big deal. i think they only know that it is a big deal because of the western versions they see of the holiday on tv and movies and now they are doing their best to imitate it. let me tell you, so far so good. i'll let you know how the rest of the christmas season pans out though...

be well tomodachis!

happy smiles!

2009-12-04T12:46:00.000+09:00

all is well here in naru. my first semester teaching here will come to and end at the close of december and i am glad to report that i have finally gotten to know some of my student's names, (new words in and of themselves, as they are names that i have never head of before in my life!) teacher's names i work with and personalitites of all the above. it has taken much longer than i anticipated, but EVERYTHING here takes longer than i think it will, so i guess that i am forgiving myself for just how long it has taken to get the ball really rolling. good beth.

i thought about something that was funny to me back when school started. it is something that anyone else in the world might think is odd, but if you have lived or taught in japan or know anything about living or working here you might just bring to mind your own first time that this happened to you and smile as well. it's all about brushing your teeth.

back in august when i first got to school there were too many things to mention that i had to start figuring out and getting used to. most of them were things like finding out where to make copies and how to read the katakana on the copy machine or how to translate the buttons on all of my computer applications from kanji or hiragana to something that i could remember. just your basic kind of exploring and there really was no one to tell me about what was what or how anything worked. i was kind of on my own as far as learning what was going on went. but i distinctly remember the day that i walked into the staffroom to find one of the other teacher's brushing her teeth. at first i was embarassed and thought that maybe she had just forgotten to do it that morning and was smart enough to keep a backup in her desk or something. but then later that day i noticed that there was a toothbrush in a little cup in the staff kitchen, then i noticed that there was one in my desk! what was going on here!? i suppose that in taking on the newness of everything that the brushing of teeth had somehow gotten lost on me for a few days but now i was really noticing it...everyone was brushing their teeth!

and now, it is true, i have come to realize that indeed everyone here, teachers and students alike both can be found brushing their teeth each day after lunch. it is a big event of sorts over at the jr high and i have found that it is much like clearning time in which it provides a great time outside of the classroom to interact with my students and get to know their personalities (see above). they all brush their teeth together and react to me in english when they are done with one simple word, "fresh!". yes it is hilarous and yes it has taken a good minute to get used to and remember to do, but now i am fully in the habit and understand it completely. i keep a small tube of toothpaste in my desk as well as a toothbrush (with a tiny head, this is the only size they have here!). there is no shame at all in standing somewhere in the main staffroom or with my students in the hall just brushing casually and having a bit of a chat. you gotta love the unexpected things that living in a foreign land bring to one's life...

hope december is treating you all well so far. i hope that the approaching holidays aren't proving to be too stressful to prepare for and that everyone is taking work, school and life in stride. i'm only too glad to be missing the craziness that can be this time of year back in the states now. whew! but we will see what they make of the holiday here, as i hear that it is quite different from the one that i am used to having back home.

merry season and happiness to everyone where ever you are!

namaste

the japanese way...

2009-11-26T14:34:00.001+09:00

so i just got done grading my first set of high school english exams. i must say i was a bit disheartened as i used my red pen more amply than i had imagined i would. the students were being graded out of 70 possible points and many of their scores were coming back as 48/70, 45/70, 32/70 and even as low as 20/70. i couldnt believe that these seeminlgy hardworking students were doing so horribly! out of 26 students only 2 scored in the 90's and the average score ended up being right around 72%. i pass these figures on to you because most of you remember high school and what was expected of you as far as test grades go and what it felt like to get one back with red marks all over it and a nice 65% grade. it felt crappy. you may have even hidden your score from your friends or your mom. i know i would have. but oooooohhhh friends, this is NOT the japanse way.

i handed the scores over to iriguchi sensei who had to enter them into the student database on his computer. he asked me how i thought the kids did and i told him that i was disappointed. to my great surprise when he was done filling the test scores out he responded back to me about them (both the response and the nature of the response were surprising). he told me that the students had done very, very well. in fact the students had done too well. it is the goal of the japanese high school system to keep all student grades between 55-65%. a lower average score is unacceptable and there will have to be something done about getting the students average grade up a few points, and a higher average score is also unacceptable and points will equally be taken from students so that their average falls within the given numbers. WWWWWHHAT!? he also told me that any student, on any test, at any time getting a grade of 100% is nearly impossible and perhaps will never happen in the high school career of any japanse student. apparently the grades one needs to pass here are a mere 30% and then you can move on a grade or even graduate. that's right, i triple checked and spoke way too loudly when i reponded to make sure he knew how crazy he sounded me to when he relayed this information. earn yourself a 30% in most classes in high school and you've earned yourself graduation from the japanese public school system!

here is where the discrepency lies; it is EXTREMELY hard to get into a japanese college and the students know this. though many of my students here will try to get in, many more of them are not even attempting it and looking towards other careers that won't require any further schooling after the 12th grade. while it is okay for students to do badly (at least by american standards) they must perform at a very high level to get into any school of recognition for post-secondary schooling. this is why they labor long and hard at juku, or study classes many of them attend after they are done with their 10 or 12 hour school day. they are not preparing for what is asked of them today or even next year, they are preparing for a test that they will have to take in many years. it is so strange to me, but so are a lot of things here. it is just the japanese way...

giving thanks

2009-11-26T10:48:00.000+09:00

I turned to look back over the harbor, as I so often do this morning on my communte to work and noticed that the scene that spread before me could be anywhere in the world. The scene that I saw could be a view in Port Townsend, WA or Vancouver B.C. or Narujima, Japan… Boats dot the waterfront as a thick roll of fog rises from the water and creeps up the sides of houses and over ancient burial shrines. It weaves a soft blanket beneath the now colorful trees that grow as far as the eye can see up and over all of the ridges that rise to build a perfect pocket for this peaceful little community. It is something to behold, and it is an inspiring way to begin each day. To behold such beauty everyday makes me grateful to be alive and reminds me to breathe deep the energy and love of this earth and this life.

These thoughts and this moment is by no means unique to today. I have these emotions about being here so many days; some days they are easier to come by than others. Today it begin with walking out the door with a melancholy feeling. I got to Skype with my mom and my sister Abbie this morning. They are with the rest of my family in Miami, FL awaiting tomorrow’s (today for me) big turkey day and then Saturday my brother will be married. It is a sad thing to know that they are together and that I am not in their midst to enjoy these special and once in a lifetime moments with them. But stepping back I have to realize that they are not here either, for my once in a lifetime moments and that I weighed this decision long ago to be here alone and to be having these morning view moments as a solo explorer. I knew that I would only be able to relay them in story and picture (if I was lucky) and that I would have to be willing to do the same with their times in America together. I knew that I would only be able to really live by taking this action and that through action we really build character in life. If we never did anything, we would never really be anybody. I remind myself of this and the melancholy turns to joy as I know we are all happy to just be alive and to have the able bodies and minds that can share and enjoy these times.

Thanksgiving in America is my most favorite of all the holidays. It is a day that requires no gifts, no glitter and no great spectacles to take part in, unless you consider gathering in your pajamas on mom’s bed to watch the parade in NY as such. It is about giving thanks and being thankful, something we should each do everyday anyway but so often forget to do as life takes over and routine and the mundane settles in. I want to spend the next 48 hours doing little more than just being thankful. I’m taking two days to celebrate because it is Thanksgiving here for me already though the day has yet to reach anyone back home. I am thankful that I have two days in celebrate it in. I am thankful that I will have a solid two days of time to focus on being thankful because all Naru students are taking tests for the next two days. I am thankful that my days of taking tests are over. I am thankful that I live and work in a beautiful community of amazing people. I am thankful that I have a growing (in so many ways!) family who will be able to celebrate it together and who will give thanks for the simple and the complicated as well. I am thankful that they are all safe and healthy, that none of them will want for food or company today. I am thankful that I am here in the sunshine of Japan experiencing life as I never even knew it could exist. I am thankful that there are people across the world who love me and think about me, people who I can rejoice with when life is good and be still with when life is strange. I am thankful for hands that can write and a brain that can make feeble attempts at putting thoughts and words together. I am thankful for music, because it is always the answer (GDE). I am thankful for the chaos and craziness of never knowing what each day will bring for me here, because it makes life exciting and keeps my eyes and ears and heart open to the world. I am thankful for a heart that holds so much love.

So Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Enjoy the holiday and remember to hold it in your head and your heart all year long, not just for one day. It is my great desire to share the simplicity of this day with those I love back in the states again one day. Though this marks the second year that I won’t be stateside for the day (BC last year was amazing, eh Punchinello!?) I still regard it as a great day in where one should EAT, love, laugh and live life to the fullest. Salude, Kan-pai, Skol and Cheers!

*Extra love and laughter go out to my brother and my new sister Sophia as they marry this weekend. I am lucky to have such a wonderful brother who has shown me what a real man should and can be. I love you Jeremy and will be with you in spirit during your big day. I can’t wait to be with you again and you better believe that I am giving thanks in advance for the delicious beer I will drink when we are together again!

sports day pictures...finally.

2009-11-10T19:40:00.000+09:00

big thanks to all the patient readers out there (um, erin and moogie) for waiting so long for these promised pics. i know i said i would get you a video of the marching and the kids repeating the "eat sh*t" mantra, but i can't get it to upload right now. i will keep trying, but for now i am going to just post what i have of pics with some explanations, or at least efforts at explanations of what is happening in them. (and seriously, i know i am wayyyy behind. this event was at the end of september and it is now november 10th. wow. sorry, time moves really fast here!)

here the students are beginning what they called some sort of simple exercise. right. they made a human fan and that is seriously cool! the seniors are pictured here and the age of the students decrease as you move back in the photo. an impressive feat, but not the most impressive. just wait. oh, and do take note here how the adults are sitting under the nice shade tents while i kids sweat it out in the hot, hot, super hot and HUMID japanese sun. jeez.

and now the students have moved on to something just a bit harder, (something i always attempted as a kid but never had the guts to get past two people high building...) the human pyramid five rows high!!!! and they just climb right up there and know that the kid under them is going to hold them or that at least they will support their fall is they slip. oh the trust they are forced to take here. subarashi! (great!)

this was my personal favorite of the building portion. the kid standing on top just stands there for many moments motionless and you can almost feel the tension happening in that human building. the guys on the bottom are all bent over and have no idea what is happening on top and the guy on top is a scaredy cat if he looks down. oh to be a student in japan... i think instructions here were something like, "just put your butts together and then let someone stand on it after they climb over you to get up really high." who knows, but the hits like this just kept coming all day...

this is by far the most popular and most anticipated event; tug of war! this is a big deal in japanese culture and adults and children do this all over the country.

here a few adults step in to help with the festivities and hold some of the flags to represent all of the kids neighborhoods that are present, which is yes, all of them in naru. very colorful and fun.oh the caterpillar, how i loved watching this one all well. these are small children (4th grade and below) getting into cardboard that has been smoothed out and they must roll it with a partner to their teammates waiting on the other side. they in turn roll it back across to more teammates waiting and the game goes on until all have completed this task. keep in mind they can't really see where they're going and they have no real sense of aim when they begin their rolling. it got very funny and those poor kids were just so confused.
okay, i know i keep saying it , but this was really something else. you may have seen this awesome act performed on some blooper television show or on youtube late nights, but this is the real deal; students lining up and one brave student (with helmet!) gets to walk across the back of all of the other students and they must keep running and getting in line until the student has made it across their backs all the way to the finish line. i laughed and laughed and laughed at this. no one else was laughing. apparently they've all done this at some point during their school years...no big woop.one of the great things about sports day was that everyone was able to get involved. they had a race for students and parents, a dress-up the teacher silliness and an elderly competition. there was a fair amount of jogging happening from these old folks and i was aptly amused and impressed at their feats. here one of the naru elders holds his prize for finishing the race. yes, it is a box a saran-wrap. they all got one. it was pretty hilarious. again, me only one laughing.
just a couple of the observers taking it all in, but when was the last time that you saw two rival tofu companies represented on the t-shirts of two people standing directly beside one another? that's what i thought, never. me too, that's why i took this photo. i do love the little laughs that living here will give me, and i could never explain why it is funny to me in a million years to them.
and the winning team celebrates! it was short lived though i'm sure of it. they probably had to go to a study session after the competition was done...such is the life of the japanse youth.

okay, so that pretty much sums up sports day. i will give the videos another chance and see if i can work something out, if anyone has any ideas on how i can post them i would love your feedback! hope you enjoyed and caught a bit of a glimpse into what fun and craziness this is all for me everyday.

until then, namaste friends.

simple strangeness...it only continues

2009-10-27T14:00:00.000+09:00

(again. wrote this one a few weeks back when I had lots of time on my hands and it just never seemed to make it up here. I'm making up for lost time and have the goal of getting pictures up tonight when I return home. Fingers crossed!)

The Do’s and Don’ts of Japanese living.

I have shared with you all through this blog already many details about life here in Japan and what is considered normal and what is not easy for a Westerner like myself to adapt to. There are many, many more of these rules and standards and they always entertain me to discover, so I thought that I would share some more of them with you. I may add here that these are only observations of mine in the last few months of living here and that by all means I’m sure that there are Japanese people out there breaking all of these generalizations. Enjoy!

Things they DON’T do here that we think is totally normal.
1. Saying “bless you” to someone who sneezes. I have gotten more than one odd look after saying this to someone immediately following their sneeze and I know that it is not due to the language barrier. It’s just not something that they say here, I have asked all five of the people on this island about it and none of them have ever heard of such a strange thing. So I am going to keep saying it because now it has just become fun for me and I’m beginning to embrace the strange looks post-sneeze that it elicits.

2. Telling someone to “have a good day”. This is totally lost on them. Again I have asked all the English speakers here and none of them can even come up with a way to translate this for me. Out of habit I still say this nearly every time I leave a classroom or a nice conversation with someone. This is of course chalked up to my crazy ‘gaijin’ nature and so I intend to keep saying this as well.

3. Licking your fingers to assist in flipping pages. I got a hearty laugh out of a few of my coworkers at an ‘enkai’ party last week when I did this as I flipped through my Japanese phrasebook. They mimicked me for the rest of the party. I had no idea it was that strange.

4. Whistling or singing out loud in public or in the staffroom for that matter is TOTALLY out of the question. I guess that for Japanese people it is not okay to show that you’re having a good time outwardly. This is not a problem again for me as I am not adhering to this except for in work situations. They can’t understand what I’m singing as I’m on my way down the street here so I guess in my mind that qualifies like they can’t hear me at all. Funny what being alone in a culture does to your rational thinking.

5. Crossing their legs while they sit. I have only seen a few other Japanese people do this since I arrived and they were all men with much longer legs than the average Japanese person. Perhaps this can be attributed to the fact that many Japanese people have short legs or perhaps it is due to the fact that they are so accustomed to sitting on mats with bent legs and never really have the opportunity to do so. No wonder my crossed legs don’t fit under my desk!

Things they DO here that we think is kind of crazy-
1. Smoke inside closed cars, houses ect. I have seen dozens of Japanese people puffing away without opening a window, not even cracking it. Though it is not acceptable to walk and smoke (most places) it is very okay to do it indoors while children are present and right outside of buildings where children are as well. (Like my principal at my elementary school who just dashes out on the deck behind his desk every thirty minutes for a quick puff. No need to lie about it right?!)

2. Eating things raw. This includes (but is not limited to) eggs, fish (here on the island, almost always fish is served raw, or at least the choice of raw fish is available), chicken and horse meat (yes, a fine delicacy here). I have eaten my share of raw fish but have resisted the offers of all the others thus far. To think that a few years back when I started eating fish again that I severely overcooked every piece of fish that I ate due to paranoia. What a long way I have come!

3. Getting really drunk with all of their coworkers and then never talking about it again. They do this on a regular basis. I am happy to report that I have not been NEARLY as intoxicated as my coworkers have, but I feel that is the mostly due to the enjoyment that I get in being completely aware of everything and enjoying their totally inappropriate and ‘’un-Japapanese” behavior. Its pretty funny to observe grown men making asses of themselves and then seeing them in the staffroom soon after with straight-faced bows and strict business approaches with you. It’s like the elephant in the living room, but there is NO WAY anyone is EVER talking about it. EVER.

4. Sports day. I will end the list with this one because this is something that is so different I have decided to include many pictures and videos of the beauty and wonder that is a Japanese Sports Day. I have been told that this is just a traditional day that has happened every year in the lives of Japanese students for generations and generations now. It is quite fun and they really get into the preparation (see a few entries back for preparation details) and execution of it. Ask any foreign teacher who has witnessed one here and they will tell you, this is the big time, and it is big time something that is NOT a part of my American school experience.

(Pictures and videos in post that will follow...)

Japan journey began...

pert near sayonara

egami tori

Tanabata

trash talk

this one time...

happy solstice!

more taiko

taiko

horse face slight return

a slight return to real life

shaking and earthquaking

omiyagi; one more

more omiyagi

omiyagi

graduation!

oh my goodness...

Part 2: Okinawa, Iriomote Island

biru=beer

Okinawa Part 1: Castle and garden on Naha

ohio again...

...and then there were two

always interesting

simple is best

horse head

ohio gozimasu!

Obon!

back with the small people

back in the USA: west side bliss

back in the USA: the flatlands

雨! ame! rain!

crabby

there are just some things i will never understand about this place

okaerinasi me...雨 お帰りなさい (rainy season)

reaquainted with summer

golden week revisited

doctor woes

nozaki pics

lucky day!

bring on the may flowers and their magical powers

caught

one grateful, golden week after another

following custom

let's biking goto!

health check day

church

Naru Apato-Mogie!

feeling good

boat pose

and one more...

more entertainment

entertainment

one more

a surrpise ending

the old and new

ends and beginnings

love and life and change

is this right?

sneaking a snap

...watchin the tide roll away

whats up with the bento?

just say YES!

get up, stand up

a complaint from the gaijin

a few more differences

stumptown back porch

the molehill is a mountain

just breathing

flowers in january

global citizenship

howl like the good wolf you are

nothing like a big piece of love

bring on another round

and the winner is...

pictures!

watch out!

the year of the tiger has commenced

catching up on photos...

one with the birds.

holy hole in the doughnut batman!

雨!　　ame! rain!

okaerinasi me...雨　お帰りなさい (rainy season)