Sunday, September 21, 2014

SO freaking EXCITED

Ok I got THE MOST amazing gift ever today. I still can't believe it, it was so out of the blue and completely unexpected. Today, I was given a full kimono outfit. HOLY COW!!!!! I was inwardly freaking out with excitement for the rest of the day :-)))))

Ok so to start off my tale, I have to tell you a piece of advice that Minori gave me a few months ago. "It's good to talk about things you like."  Seems simple enough, right? Minori said that if you do that, sometimes people like to show how thoughtful they are by giving you those kinds of things. For the sole reason of being nice and remembered positively.

Over the past six months (six months to the day, actually) my "Things I go crazy over" list consists of…

Japanese fans. I'm starting to wish I had a wall of fans.

 Kiyomizudera

Studio Ghibli Artwork

Dachshunds. Sometime in the next few years I plan on getting one. 

Harem pants. Soooooo comfortable.

Obis



Riding trains

Buying presents

My students.

Korean Seaweed



….and last, and certainly most addicting…




Anywho. About a month ago, as we were waiting for parents to pick up their kids, one of the mothers had stopped to chat with Minori. This mother is gorgeous (they all are!), and she occasionally comes to school wearing simple but elegant kimono. It's due to her status I think, but I'm not supposed to give names. Anyways, Minori called for me because she knew I'd love to admire the kimono the mother was wearing that day. Of course I came, and of course I was like, "wooooow kirei desk!!!!! sugoi!!!! So beautiful!!!"  After that, Minori mentioned to the mom about how much I loved yukata and kimono, and about my awesome geisha photoshoot in Kyoto. The mom was very interested and asked if she could see those photos in the future.

Fast-forward to today, the 10th anniversary of Chubu International Preschool!!!  Ms. Minori, Ms. Mihoko, Ms. Michiyo, Ms. Julpha, and Ms. Jakka are upstairs dealing with cooking and selling foods, as well as books, presents, and games. Meanwhile, Ms. Jaciel, Ms. Elma, and I are downstairs managing art time, story time, dance dance, and the presentation about poverty in the Philippines (all the money being made upstairs is being sent to the Philippines). Many people brought clothes and other things to donate, it was great! Anyways, once the crowds started to die down, Minori came downstairs and asked me to come upstairs. On the way up, she said that this mom I told you about wanted to give me a Kimono. I had to ask her 3 different times, in 3 different ways, just to be absolutely sure she was serious and it wasn't a misunderstanding. But yup. I went upstairs with these wide eyes, and I was already trying not to breathe all deep and crazy from excitement. Turns out Minori had also told this mother about some of the specific styles of Yukata that I liked, and it turned out that she had many of those kinds of Kimono. I still cannot believe how generous she was to have given it to me!!

I got a further surprise when we went into a classroom so that she could show me how to properly put it all on. I had my school clothes on the whole time, so that made me feel a little funny, but once the robe was on, I forgot about my uniform. I was thrown for another loop when I discovered that she wasn't just giving me a kimono, she was giving me a gorgeous obi, and like 5-6 other pieces you need to complete the outfit. I was in shock, and starting to talk really high ha ha. Since she couldn't speak much English, I was saying as much as I could in Japanese to express how excited I was and how beautiful and amazing everything was.

The obi has these gorgeous flowers sewn into it, and it's a two piece obi, which I've never worn before!   It all looked soooooo nice!  I was seriously so excited and determined to show my gratitude, I was bowing every few seconds ha ha ha! She even bought me some cherry blossom Geta socks to go with my shoes ha ha, how thoughtful!!!

After I was fully dressed, and she'd she'd shown me what to do (it was very similar to what I need to do when putting on a yukata, just a few new tweaks and materials), I did a little turn around in the kimono, all excited.  And I kid you not, that's when I heard some "eeeeeh?" and "oooooo!" and "aaaaah, sugoi!" from the volunteer mom's in the room next door. I turned a little red, and laughed a bit more when some of my students had wandered in and their jaws dropped.  One of the 6 year olds actually gave me a slow clap ha ha ha ha ha!!!! I laughed my head off.

Minori helped me by taking some reference photos of the obi in the back, so I could check to make sure I could do it right on my own.  God bless that woman.  And God bless the amazingly thoughtful woman who gave it to me!




Thursday, September 18, 2014

Korea

I've made it a habit to force myself to write my experiences in my journal before I blog them, because if I blog it first, all that handwriting becomes too daunting and I leave stuff out. I do leave out stuff in my blog, due to it being too hilarious for people to handle, or because I am writing extra stuff about the photos I took.

Can I first say how strange it is to go from being surrounded by a foreign language you partially understand, to a language you don't understand at all?  It was like coming to Japan for the first time all over again, but more stressful because I didn't even know THANK YOU or HELLO ha ha ha.

Minori's engaged to this great guy named Konan (aaaaaawwweeesoomme name, but not because of Arnold. It's a reference to something Korean), and since they're getting married in May, she and her parents were honoring a tradition where the parents meet and go out to dinner and talk about…stuff. I don't know many of the details, but I do know that back in the day, the bride's parents would give a big present of money to the groom's parents, to show their wealth.  It's not common now.

Anywho, Ms Mihoko and I flew in and joined them after they had finished all the formal stuff up, when Konan's parents had taken their flight back to the area they come from. 

 First off, I'd never been to the shopping area of Nagoya's airport before. It was AWESOME!!! It's the first place where I saw the crazy KitKat variety flavors.  It had all sorts of fun stores and restaurants.  It had 3 different sections, and they felt like different areas from the world.  One felt like paris or something, one felt like old japan, and the last one was just a modern mall feel.
Anywho the 4 flavors here are Green Tea (love), Cherry Blossom Tea, Strawberry, and Red Bean.
 There's a caramel fuji flavor apparently.

I'd never seen a plane tail open like that before.  It was a little unsettling how unattached it seemed.

Farewell Japan!

Aaaaand Hello Korea and your mighty drums.

The way Ms. Mihoko got such a great deal on the trip was by going through a tour company.  Apart from picking us up, driving us to a skin product outlet store, dropping us off at our hotel, and then driving us back to the airport….that was as involved as the tour was.  Which I was ok with, I'm a fan of wandering around. 
Here's the bus, picking us up.

Lo and behold, I had a bit of a giggle when I saw the purple frill everywhere in the bus. As we drove, I was thinking of the Maria song from West Side Story….but Korea, Korea, Koreaaaaaa!

Something else I wanted to show was a bus feature that I wasn't sure if America had it or not. Those black armrests are actually seats that fold out and up.  I got to sit in one of those on that weekend where all those people were dancing and cheering in Sakae.  It was interesting, and seemed like it would be hell for someone with claustrophobia.  

Ah….Seoul. Twas very different from Japan. Seoul covers such a huge area!

Incredibly bad pic of Seoul Olympic Arena

 Here is one of the many Lotte Department stores. We stopped here for about an hour, so people could grab all the skin care products they desired. Cosmetics are huuuuuge in Korea.

I discovered that most of the shoppers that day were Chinese.

I have a co-worker that would love this backpack. Come to think of it, I love this backpack.

Ah, Snail essence face masks. I was given a pack, though I haven't tried it yet. I saw all sorts of masks made from all sorts of "natural" things like broccoli, every fruit and tea out there, and horse oil. 

ooooweeoooooooooWEEwoooooooooo….

Found some cute face powder packs.

Twas quite full.

There were so many cool looking buildings.  And I only got to see a teeny bit of Seoul, so I wonder how many other cool ones were out there.

Hyongdongbadongmong….

Traffic was crazy and at times scary. Generally, I'd say Koreans & Japanese have different manners, definitely. Many of the Koreans I came into contact with was due to them pushing to get past me.

Here's my hotel room.  AMAAAAZING, on the sixth floor, and had a 5th Element bit to it. You know when Gary Oldman's character slides that card in that slot to stop the bomb?  My room had a slot where you had to put your keycard in order to access the lights or TV. Took me a minute of confusion before I noticed this slot and tried my luck, so….ya that was funny.

Les View from my window. It was gorgeous.  Behind the tan building was the Seoul Tower, which was cool.

Here be I, about to go downstairs.

And out I went, to see all sorts of unfamiliar foods and such.
These smelled sweet and delicious.

Ms Mihoko and I got hustled into eating at this restaurant.  Luckily it was great food!  Every table gets a set of small dishes automatically. Here we have Kimchi, spicy radish, spicy squid, seaweed, …and i can't remember the others. Did you know that Korean chopsticks are flat, not cylindrical?

Ms Mihoko got some super long spicy noodles.  Hilarious story dealing with those noodles.  Long story short, did you know they use scissors to cut noodles at the table?  ha ha ha great story of sharing and not noticing the blasted scissors.






Found someone wearing an AWESOME hat.

More fun food. The eggs were baked on bread in the red stove and then put out for sale on top.

Spiraled Potato, anyone? Tasted quite good.

Yup. I tried me some Pigs foot. I had a scarring moment when the seller took the food and ripped the hooves apart into bite sized pieces.  Watching that was darn right creepy. And sadly, pig feet taste rather bland and chewy. So…ya at least I know now right?

Another….thing I tried was called Sunde. By far the most extreme thing I've tried, and although it didn't taste that bad at the time, knowing what it was made of, and looking at it, is enough that I'll never have it again.  Sunde is cooked pig intestine, stuffed with pig's blood and noodles. ………….yup.

Anyway on a lighter note, look at these shoooooees!  So cute!

I only know of 2 people in my life who would know why I took this photo. Angie and my Dad. If anyone else knows, tell me so I can be excited that you've seen a true classic.

We stayed at an amazing hotel one block away from the heart of Myeongdong, a huge shopping district in Seoul.

Oh look, more street food. hot dogs breaded with various ingredients.

The minute you even LOOKED at a store's merchandise, they had sellers coming at you trying to pressure you to enter, or buy something. It was crazy.  There were so many times I high-tailed it out of a place because they were so in your face about it.  Let me look in peace!!!

The strangest ice cream cones I've ever seen. not only that, but after about 5 minutes, they start leaking so you have to eat fast.  I got a mini version of this, and it started leaking. twas madness. And the cone was bland.

Batdog? Dogbat?

I know it's fuzzy. But it's got some people I lerv in it.

Nanta!!!! The longest running show in Korea, 18 years and counting!
Here's the entrance.

It's like a cooking version of stomp. Very comedic too.

And lots of food flying everywhere of course.

Stopped to get a bite to eat, and found a place where the appetizer was some fried spaghetti. 

The party never ends. We went through mazes of shops to find a little food place tucked in there. Felt like a movie!

Meet my favorite people in Japan! Minori's father, Minori herself, and Ms Mihoko!!

And this gentleman is Konan!  He's great!  And one could NEVER have a list of favorite people in Japan without Minori's Mother being at the top of that list. I could spend all day with that glorious woman. Come to think of it…..I have. Many times.

"Try the pepper!" Minori said….."It's not hot! I tried one already!" Minori said.  "Ok, I'll try one, but you've got to eat another just to prove that you really ate one."  I said.
…..And oh, how the lips and taste buds burnt. To a tear dropping crisp.

You eat one dish at one place…and then you wander off in search of another place to continue the fun.

And then the sunde showed up. Minori's Mom tried it with me. Konan's a fan of it. And apparently it keeps your skin very fresh and clear!

He's like a model, that man lol. After Nanta, he was drumming his fingers all over the place. Minori's Mom and Dad have looked out for me soooooooo much, ever since I arrived in Japan.  I love every moment I get to spend with the Higashi family!

 Minori and I were having so much fun failing at taking a jumping shot!

The next day we went to….oh crap I forgot the name.  It's another cool shopping district.

Gungnam style is still very "in".

I kept singing "Portabello Road" to myself as I perused.
 Men would put these on and carry packages around on their bags. insane!

Ok this is more like what happened at meal times. This was such a cool restaurant Konan found!  We only ordered the 3 main dishes in the middle.  the other 18 dishes come with every meal.

The mountains looked gorgeous, when I caught a glimpse of them.  Konan told me that more than 70% of South Korea is covered in mountains.  Think of the hikes!!

Think of the Pizzas!!

….mustard….pizza?

We found ourselves a food store that I labeled the Costco of Korea.
Ok, these asian pears were bigger than my little nephew Wesley's head.

By George, you put those Christmas items away or so help me I will smite you.  It's SEPTEMBER. THE LEAVES ARE STILL GREEN, DASH IT ALL.

Farewell Myeongdong….it was an incredible, eye opening, cultural dip. If I ever get to go back, I hope I can see a few more historical sides of Korea next time!
'


I need to leave one more note.  I can't tell you how relieved I was to hear the familiarity of the Japanese language when we landed in Japan. When we got off the plane, things were quieter, people were polite again, and Japanese was all I could hear being spoken.  And even though I'm still an amateur at the language, I'd gotten used to hearing it, so it was comforting.