We laced up our skates and wobbled (well, more me than Lynn) onto the Ice. There we saw Kelsey (my other friend, who is not a JET, but teaches for a private company) racing around like a pro. Oh dear. Lynn, braced me (0kay I grabbed her for dear life) and gave me some pointers on staying upright. Oh dear.
Well, after a few really slow turns around the rink I started to relax a bit (it helped my confidence that every few
seconds a small japanese child would fall on their bum beside me) . Eventually we caught up with Kelsey and she introduced us to two guys she worked with, Lance (an almost 7-foot-tall guy from Kentucky, i think) and Adam (a friendly looking guy with a short beard and equally short hair on the top of his head). We all had a great time just skating about. I felt totally freed, floating across the ice.
Me, Lynn, and Adam making a crazy face.
Well, after about 2 hours Lynn and I felt totally exausted (and my tight-laced feet were cramping up), so we decided to head out. Having worked up great appetite, we had some of the most delicious indian curry at a restaurant north of Kofu station. Then we met-up with Kelsey and Adam again and headed-over to Adam's place to watch a few movies (one of which was the incredibly disturbing japanese movie "Battle Royal"). All in all it was a nice day of hanging-out and making new friends.
The next day, Lynn and I bumed around some temples (we were hoping to see many girls dressed in kimono for coming-of-age-day - when they are 20 years old girls dress up and visit temples and have parties with friends and family - but it turned out that everyone had celebrated the holiday a day early. go figure.)
Jizo with baby in his left hand and prayer beads and staff in his right hand.
Oh well, we went grocery shopping at this great international grocery near Lynn's place ( i found soft taco shells, peanut butter, and lentils there - score!).
Stone flute player near Isawa onsen station (where lynn and I were exploring temples).
Twilight from my balcony on sunday (note mt. fuji on the left horizon).
Today was my first day back teaching after the holiday. I went to this school Tokai, which is a very sports-focused high school. The students were actually pretty good today (i.e. only four were text messaging on their cell phones and only three students were sleeping...hehe). I did have a lil awkward moment with a teacher. The teacher wrote the Japanese kanji for "tuxedo" on the board and then proceeded to explain that you would say it in english as "swallow's tail" (I, guess, because of the "tail" in the back of the tuxedo). He was adament that this was, infact, the proper english term for this type of clothing, not the all familiar term "tuxedo". Oh dear. I was forced to say the following silly sentence to the students: "He was wearing a swallow's tail". Then, later, while I was saying the word "thermometer" aloud to the students, the same teacher adamently accused me of pronouncing it wrong - he claimed it should be pronounced "thermo - meter". Oh dear, I let it pass.
I got of early at lunchtime, because the students were having an assembly in the afternoon. I grabbed an o-bento lunch and headed to the top of Kofu castle for a beautiful view.
Fuji-san
After, I decided to go grocery shopping for the rest of what i'd need for tacos at this great grocery store that is located on the bottom floor of a huge department store known as Okajima.
scary geneticly-modified identical strawberries
horrendously over-packaged fruit
Oh, what a deal! Two mellons for only 16,800 yen ($168)!!! and they come with a bonus wooden display case!
...."oh, and honey, don't forget to pick-up some edible flowers on your way home"....
cheers!
Gracie
5 comments:
Hey, Ice scating in Japan . . . Why not? . . .sounds like fun. And Battle Royal, by the way, is totally wicked: An unsuspecting class of students taken to a deserted island and forced to kill each other off one by one . . .by the government no less! Holy Shit!! the question is not how to make a premise like that work, but, rather, how could such movie possibly go wrong . haha. Anyway, stay warm Grace and stay away from those franken-strawberries.
Peace
-Chris
haha...thanks chris. I actually bought a container of the strawberries just for the experience a month ago...but after one tasteless, frightening bite I couldn't take it. I stuck them in my freezer thinking "maybe I'll eat them later"...they are still there waiting for me...scary
as for battle royal..ya, what a twisted movie. But, want to hear something even more twisted? I read the book (i found on a free grabe-and-take bookshelf at the "international center" in my city) a month after I got here. After 2 days of obsessive reading, I couldn't help seeing every young, innocent junior high student as a bottled-up potential killer...oh dear. Not to worry, I got over it...
Ice Skating! I LOVE Ice Skating!!! You lucky lady! Fun, Fun, fun! Okay, I'm hyper. Anyway, it's really cool reading your blog. I look forward to it and keep hoping you'll post more and more. So Keep it coming!!
Those packaged fruits were weird...everything seems to be very packaged in Japan. Are they afraid of germs? And were those marigolds you could buy? Cause I actually ate some last summer from my garden and they are delicious!
And hey that was cool...the stone flute player. I'm still learning to play mine and I really enjoy it. Once I get settled with work I'm going to look to take some music lessons.
Hey! I got a job...teehee. I sent you an email about that. :)
Working at the hospital! SO EXCITED!
I love you Grace! You just keep trucking along, you are doing awesome and I am so proud of you!
love always sista,
Carissa
glad to see you having fun iceskating! hehe, did it make you want to wave around a canadian flag when you saw the zamboni and hum out the national anthem?! :) i like your strawberry mittens, they are quite cute....but those packaged ones are not so cute. haha, you could probably just feed them to the next stray dog/cat you see out on the street.
guess what! SNOWWWWW is falling hard out the window. we got a whole dump back in Nov. too. but ya, right now there's gotta be about 10cm out there (on top of the layer from this morning). will send you pics.
after locking myself up in the house for 9 days of being sick coughing like mad w/ a cold, i will see if i can build meself a snowman/igloo....
keep having fun, grace! miss you. lots of hugs sending your way.
carissa -glad your hyper-excited about my blog. It might get boring for a wee bit, because im batening (sp?) down the hatches (aka hiding from the freezing weather) and need to recover from round-two of my cold.
as for packaged things...yes i think there is a big obsession with contamination and what is dirty vs clean etc. For example, the obsession with always taking off shoes when you go into a school, changing room, home, etc. Also they alway keep their toilets in a little seperate room away from the bathtub. Also, you are supposed to scrub furiously OUTSIDE of the bath, before getting in (again don't want your dirty body to contaminate the clean water). So, ya, I think the overpackaging may be tied to all this fear of contamination.
Good luck with the flute playing. I think you should always fill your life with things that make you happy.
Congrats on the job!! Working in a hospital, eh? Thats awesome. I knew something would come along that would be right for you! I will check my email and read your little note.
theresa - haha...yes when I saw the zamboni I and my friend Kelsey (who is from Nova Scotia were like the last ones to clear off the ice and we were like all going "WOHO! a zamboni!"
feed the strawberries to the strays eh? Oh dear, speaking of which there are ALOT of stray cats in Japan. Its pretty sad. They act really wild too...they won't even approach you to sniff your hand or beg for food. Unfortunately, many pets are overpampered or neglected here.
SNOW eh?! WOW cool. We had a little dusting and now it is all gone. I am so jelous! Good luck with the igloo building....im hiding out inside with the cold right now too...i hear its hard to get over them here in Japan, because of the inability to stay warm (no central heating...grrr).
Love you both!
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