Seamus and Smokey

This past weekend our friend Seamus came down from Osaka to see how wonderful Kumamoto is! It was a long weekend, and Erin and I packed it full of fun things to do! We ate some delicious food, went to one of the most famous onsen villages in Japan, saw Aso-san (the volcano) in the snow and even made a Costco trip to get ready for Thanksgiving!














































One of the main highlights is that my friends Matt and Shannon got the CUTEST puppy ever! They named it Smokey and I could honestly just play with it forever! (If you've seen my facebook pictures, I could basically fill up an album with just photos of the puppy!) Here are some highlights:





























In other news, this week has mostly been spent trying to get things squared away for my winter trip to Thailand! I'm going from December 19 - January 7 and I can't wait for the BEACHES!!! Tomorrow, I'm going to be celebrating Thanksgiving with some friends. Being so far away on a family-oriented holiday is difficult (they don't eat turkey here either :( ...) but being around good friends will make it a little easier!

Well I think I should be caught up for the most part. There have been fun little things here and there, but the big stuff has all been posted. Hope all is well back home and Happy Thanksgiving!

The girl that has been in Aso for 5 years, Xina, invited me out the other day to take part in some food steaming up in Oguni (a nearby town.) One of her Japanese friends had a sister in town from Kyoto who is a writer for a major Japanese newspaper. About five women came and brought all these raw foods for our lunch. We made different types of dumplings and steamed them by directing a metal pipe with the natural steam towards our food. One of the women had twin sons that I officially want to adopt, so Xina and I had a blast playing with the kids. While the women fussed about making their dumplings perfect, Xina, the kids and I were more interested in making dough moustaches and drumming with our chopsticks. I think (or hope) the old ladies got a kick out of us though! Then, to top it off, our picture was put in the newspaper! Here is the link –

Asahi article I’m famous!

After we made the food, we walked around the town, went to an onsen and just had a nice, relaxing Sunday! I hope to do more stuff like this in the future! Here are some pictures of the day:

Enkai's and adventure!

I had an enkai the other night at the Principal of my Junior High School’s house. An enkai is basically a drinking party. Usually enkai’s are held at an izzakiah, which is a restaurant that does all you can eat/drink for a couple of hours. The principal (or kocho sensei) had an unbelievable house though, so it was fun to go there, and to top it off, he rented a karaoke machine for the evening! There was lots of food and drinking, and they even made me sing some karaoke (the chorus of a Japanese song, that repeats the same word over and over again.) Enkai’s have been known to get pretty crazy, with multiple parties continuing on after the first dinner party, but this one was pretty tame.

The next day my friend Naoko took me on one of her day trips! I never know where she is taking me, but it always turns out to be somewhere fun! A couple weeks ago she took me to a ‘Make your own soba’ place, where we made soba noodles from scratch and cooked them up for lunch! She also took me to some local farms and a park. But this time we went to Saga prefecture to the Tosu outlets! We went to the Gap and found some clothes in my size! That day I taught Naoko the phrase, “I’m like a kid in a candy store.”

Winter is a comin!

It’s getting cold! Japan has no central heat. None. Everyone asks me which is colder – Boston or Aso? Well Boston might be colder, but inside is at least comfortable! I’ve started going to the Onsen all the time and I layer up for school! I’m sure it’s going to get worse too, especially when it snows, but for now all I can do is go by some kerosene and wear A LOT of clothes!

Halloween - Japanese style

Happy Halloween! Well they don’t celebrate Halloween here, but of course the Americans have brought it over and the Kumamoto JETs are well known for having a great Halloween party! The weekend before Halloween, we had a Halloween themed surprise party for an ALT in my area. It was tons of fun and he literally had no clue. Then the next week at school I got to teach the students about Halloween, including teaching them the “Trick or Treat” chant. The actual Halloween weekend was quite busy. My eikaiwa had a Halloween karaoke potluck on Friday night (I was a cat), Saturday I helped out at a local children’s Halloween party for kids that have English tutors (I was a cowgirl), and Saturday night I went to the big ALT party dressed as the swine flu. Sunday was all about recovering and then it was back to school on Monday!

SWINE FLU!

Well the swine flu made it’s rounds out in Aso! My favorite teacher got it and a couple of days later our school was shut down! Of course, the teachers still had to go to school and hang out in our masks. But it was actually quite fun. I gave them all little Halloween goody bags I had made with some American candy from Costco, studied some more Japanese, and just chatted about the many differences in Japan and America. Here’s a lovely mask photo for you all…

Bunkasai and speech contest

My junior high school had the annual English speech contest and annual culture festival in these past couple of weeks! 2-4 students from each grade in every junior high school in Japan, practice an English passage from their textbook and present it in front of local judges. If they place in the local competition, they go to the prefectural level and then the national. Some schools take this very seriously, practicing months in advance. My school, well, not so much. We started a couple weeks before, played some basketball, worked on some English pronounciation, and just went for the ‘let’s have fun with English’ approach. And it was fun! We made up some over the top gestures when ordering fast food and asking ‘large or small?’ ‘for here or to go?’ The kids all had a great time, and since I knew they probably wouldn’t place, I made them American-style certificates - which I’m not gonna lie, the other students were jealous of ;)















The students also got to present their English speeches at the culture festival. The culture festival is an annual fall event done by every school in Japan. Students display artwork, class projects, perform dances, plays, and finish with each class competing in a singing compition. It was lots of fun to watch and really refreshing to see my students displaying their talents outside of the English classroom! The culture festival ended with me and the principle having an entire conversation in Japanese! I was so excited and he told me I must be studying, to which I replied – every day! Ah slowly but surely I’m able to communicate!

Country Gold!

I never would’ve imagined in a million years that Kumamoto, Japan loves country music, but guess what – it does! (The city is actually featured in Brad Paisley’s new music video, Welcome to the Future) In mid-October there is a HUGE country music festival with more Americana than I have ever seen ourside of NYC, the South, and the 4th of July. It was pretty amazing. From competitive square dancing teams from all over Japan to confederate flags for sale, it was quite the experience! Of course my friends and I decked ourselves out for the event, getting in on the line dancing and basically just acting like this is what we do everyday in America. It was tons of fun and I can’t wait for next years festival! Who would’ve guessed, my first country music festival ever was in Japan!

American visitor

After returning home, the ALT from 5 years ago came to visit with his Japanese wife and 1 year-old-baby! She was adorable! We all went to a local preschool together, and then went to my Junior High School to visit with old teachers! Even though all the students asked me if he was my husband (because clearly since he lives in America, brought his half Japanese daughter and Japanese wife to school, and I say I don’t have a boyfriend every day we are married…) it was a lot of fun to show him around and see him reconnect with some of the students that had him as a teacher back when they were elementary school students! He also had offered to bring me things I’m missing from the states, which was really nice. I didn’t want to send him on a wild chase for anything, but he did bring me some parmesan flavored goldfish (hint, hint)

Hiroshima!

Ok ok I know. I’ve been a horrible blogger! But hey – wouldn’t you rather me being out enjoying Japan rather than hunched over a computer? I thought so. So ok…let’s catch up.

First things first – I went to Hiroshima for a long weekend and had a really great time! There was a sake festival that weekend, but the group and I were more interested in seeing the Hiroshima sights, and thought that a festival solely dedicated to drinking might detract from what happened in the city.

Erin and I took a bus and met up with an Osaka friend when we got there. Then we wandered around trying to find our hostel, unpacked when we finally found it, and then went out for some of Hiroshima’s famous Okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki has two styles – Osaka style and Hiroshima style. Hiroshima cooks noodles inside this pancake vegetable mixture - it's really delicious!

The next day the three of us went to the Hiroshima peace park, where we saw the A-bomb dome (building right under where the bomb exploded) the museum, childrens memorial (with the 1000 paper cranes if you’ve ever read that book…) and other really powerful sights. It was pretty interesting being there as an American, and I felt a little awkward at times knowing who dropped the bomb and all, but it was equally as important for me to see it. One thing that surprised me was the many paragraphs of text dedicated to encouraging the Japanese to take responsibility for their actions and involvement as well. While the peace park commemorates those lost in WWII, especially victims of the bomb, the park has a sense of optimism and hope for the future. One of my favorite parts was a wall that had hundreds of letters written by the Mayor of Hiroshima. For every test of a nuclear weapon, the mayor sends of letter urging them not to in hope of peace. Unfortunately, many of these letters were sent to US addresses….

After spending the day in the park, we went to Hiroshima castle and then made our way over to the second hostel we were staying at. This hostel was right on the coast because in the morning we were heading to the island of Miyajima, which is in the top three beautiful sights in Japan. (The Japanese are super into ranking things…everything here is like ‘the 4^th largest tree in the southern most region of the central island of Japan’ – and it’s kind of hilarious) The hostel was, well interesting, to say the least. It was the owners birthday that night so when we got there, so he was already really drunk when we got there. He checked us in and then escorted us over to his birthday party! One of the hostel workers had studied in Arkansas (where Erin is from) so she was RIDICULOUSLY excited to meet us. It was quite a night, but we needed to get some rest because we wanted to make it out to the Miyajima floating gate at low tide!

Well, we amazingly did make it to the island bright and early which meant we could walk out to the gate! After taking some pictures there, we toured the rest of the island, including taking a really long hike to the top of the mountain, riding on a steep ropeway, avoiding the aggressive deer (well, as well as we could – they even eat paper!) and of course sampling the famous cuisine (oysters, eel, and these maple leaf shaped pancake treats).

Then we went back to the first hostel we stayed in, dropped off our bags, and hit the town for some dinner, karaoke, etc.

The next day we woke up early to go see a beautiful garden in the city. We walked around and even made some new friends! This old lady wanted to take a photo with us and when I made room for her, she pointed to my other side because she wanted to sit next to Seamus! But then she gave us cream puffs so I couldn’t be that upset!

Afterwards, Erin and I said farewell to Seamus and ventured back to the ‘moto! All and all a great trip!