Oh Yuto-kun

Since it's summer school right now, I'm not I charge of caring for after school day care kids. One kid who is always there is cutie-face 2 year old Yuto. He is adorable, and is always belting out Let it Go, or It's a Small World. In Japanese of course. He doesn't know too much English yet because hey, he's two. But he talks up a storm in Japanese. I can actually understand most of it! Anywho, a few days ago I was in the bear room on my break, studying. Yuto was with Mr John in the neighboring penguin room. Yuto was talking a bunch to Mr John and Mr John was talking back. Neither knew what the other was saying, but they didn't seem to mind. At some point I heard Yuto say, "mou ii kai..." A few times. 

I'd happened to see a takarazuka show where they said that a bunch during a scene, and it was always followed by a "mada da yo". I didn't quite know what it meant.

I know we aren't supposed to speak Japanese while at school, but I sometimes sneak in a random sentence or two. 

I quietly started saying "mada da yo" everytime he said "mou ii kai." I had no idea what it meant, I figured I'd just try saying it and see what happened. I tried to say it soft enough that Mr. John didnt hear me.  After two times I think Yuto heard me, because he got quiet and giggled a bit. He kept saying mou ii Kai as he ran into my room and gave me a big hug. Me John hadn't heard me, so he seemed a bit confused ha ha!

I looked the meanings up.

Mou ii Kai - ready yet?

Mada da yo - not yet!

Mou ii yo - ready!

Japanese hide and seek! Such a cute Yuto moment!

Typhoons and Mary poppins

There was supposed to be a typhoon today. I've been in a hurricane, and I was stoked to experience a typhoon. Sadly it turns out that nagoya is situated in an area that misses out on weather extremes and other disasters. But it got quite rainy here, and I had the urge to walk after work today. I ended up finding the perfect most scenic jogging route right next to my apartment. Through some gorgeous paddy terraces no less. I took photos but they're on my camera. Sometime in the future. 

So I've loved the view from my front door ever since I moved in, so I decided I would paint it. I'm not finished yet, because I'm painting it only on rainy days, and I only have forty minutes or so to work on it on those days. But it's coming along. Today when I was walking through the rice paddies, I tecognized houses, and trees even. I had never walked in this area before. I realized it was because I has been looking at those areas from my window for my painting! I instantly felt like I was having a merry poppins moment where I'd leapt into a painting. It gave me better understanding  of each of the green shade changes I had been toiling through. In that area of the painting. Hopefully my discovery will help my painting.

Moooo

 I don't eat beef if I can help it. But this day was a day for beef it seemed. We went out to eat at a yakiniku restaurant. Yaki=burn, niku=meat. 

Ready for another handful of firsts? They're a-comin.

Our table. They were filled with coals, and had a little wire cover for placing the food on.

All I could think was "reeeed. Where are the veggies?" And then I started reading. Can YOU see what I saw?

Left: cow tongue.     Right: muscle

Just in case you wanted a close up of those tongues Bwa ha ha

Time to start. We had a ton of different meats. We started with these. When one was cooked we'd hurry and dip it in one of the many sauces we had, and devour. What we soon realized was if we kept filling the empty areas on the grill, we had to eat fast so the food wouldn't burn haha! Talk about fresh.

Cow intestine anyone? T'was good.

It's not pictured but we did finally get to cook up some veggies, which were delicious. The cow tongue was good. The only moment it was weird was during the first piece. I was chewing it, and I couldn't stop thinking about how I was chewing a tongue, on my tongue. I had to shove those thoughts out of my head if I wanted to eat. Once I ate without thinking about it, it tasted great!

This is Minori. The weirdest thing that night was not tongue. It was definitely hormone. They sold cow hormone. I had two pieces, and man that was a strange 

texture. Very chewy.

This is at the end after we are pretty much everything. Although you can see a few red hormone right in the middle. Oh I forgot about the bibimpa!   It's a Korean rice dish I got to try. Good! The name was fun.

Went to baskin robins after. 

I've had green tea a ton by now so I looked for another strange flavor. Fooouuunnnd it! The top one is just coffee, but the bottom is sweet red bean. Beans mixed in and all. I am a fan of sweet bean treats, do this tasted great!! That's Julpha btw. 

Peaches, Figs, Porridge, and Curry

BI hadn't planned on doing much tonight since I work Saturdays, but things just happened.

And when it rains, it pours.

Yesterday I found a perfect jogging route through some rice paddies. And since Minori and I jog on Fridays, that's where I suggested we jog. Right when we got to the center do the pAddy area, Minori found a sign indicating peaches for sale. We decided to take that route, and wound up at a beautiful farm.

Right next to the peaches was a fig orchard which was really cool! 

Eventually I'll go back when there is more produce.

When we jogged back into the city, we passed some girls in marching shirts. Minori told me that they were factory workers on their way home. The more she described their living circumstances, the more I thought about a documentary I'd seen called china blue, a documentary about blue jeans factory workers. Go watch it. It was quite the eye opener to realize how close I lived to such a different way of life!

On the way home, Minori invited me over again, which I gladly accepted. We had some yummy rice porridge, some radishes, Japanese curry , potato salad, cucumbers, and salmon. I've asked Minori to check and see if her mom would be interested in giving me cooking lessons. She is amazing!

After dinner, Minori's mom showed me how she makes her nendo art, and Minori showed me her new Yukata. Minori looks gorgeous in it! At that point they invited me to try on some yukatas. I got to try on a pale blue one that her mother used to wear, a bright green one they bought in an Indian based Yukata shop, Minori's new one, and a beautiful pink kimono. We were just having fun and playing around at that point! 

By now it was pretty late, so we were going to turn in. Before we did though, Minori wanted to make sure I had a lunch ready for tomorrow, despite my protests. She showed me some speedy bento secrets, and taught me how to make an egg roll! It's a Japanese egg roll so I'll have to post a picture at some point. Anyways went to bed after that. Tetsu followed me up and settled down with me for the night :)

Bentos

Here is a typical lunch day at school. I don't have my normal bento (yes I have one) because today, it's a long story why, Minori made me a bento.

Around half the class gets school lunch, which a food van drops off every day. That's the blue container. This student always gets a school lunch and home lunch. The school lunch usually comes with rice, veggies like seaweed, pumpkin, potato, carrot, spinach, corn, onion....it's different everyday. They sometimes get a roll instead of rice, and on those days I never have to worry about slow eaters lol. They also get a little bit of meat, and a bite's worth of jello or fruit at the end. This student's home lunch has some rice, apple, Camembert, and some pancake. He is a normal weight, he just has a big appetite. And he wats at a normal pace, but because he has two lunches, he and I are racing everyday to finish. 

About half the students use chopsticks daily. 3year olds, let me remind you. The other half either don't have them packed, or their bites are too small, so they have to use their forks. Man I wish I could talk about the kids individually, they are cute and hilarious. This girl has mellon, rice, baby tomato, egg, onion, and spinach. 

If I let the kids eat at their own pace, only three or so would finish on time. So since we have a schedule I have two tactics I use to speed them up. One is I have them seated so that the kids who get distracted, take minuscule bites, or chew super slowly, sit by me so I can say things like "chew chew chew! Finish chewing in fiiiive foooouuuur, threeeee, twooooo, oooonnnneeee and take a drink!! Big bite! You can do it! Way to go _____, ok oi!"

This student has kiwi, mandarin oranges, rice, egg, broc, tomato, fish and meatball.

My other method to speed them up is by rewarding the first three finishers a big smiley drawn on their hand. This results in most lunchtimes being filled with shouts like "(they say their name) numbah one!" "No, _____ number one!" "Ms Alyssa looka paleese!(shovels a Wayyyy too big of a bite into their mouth)" "Ms Alyssa, finish!"  

This one is my special Minori bento! Edamame, amazing potato salad, egg, sausage, rice, string cheese so good it makes American string cheese taste fake, and not pictured are more Sumomo plums. It was delicious.

It was jaw dropping to see the see variety of healthy foods the kids eat. Not only that but their manners are impeccable. Of they drop some food, they'll say may I get a tissue, and go throw it away. They will eat whatever their mom packed, whether they like it or not. I've had glares while I watched kids munching food I knew they weren't fans of. They frown, but they eat it without me having to ask.

This one has grapes ( which most people here peel as they eat.), rice, egg, broc, sausage, pickled plum, meatball, daikon

YAy I got one with a jelly shot! Jello is huge here, and it's called jelly. It's the dark circle under the orange. The kids love them, and adults have different versions they buy for themselves. They get given as gifts all the time. 

This one has some rice balls, meatballs, jelly, tomato, and an orange.

Anyways isn't it cool how healthy it all is? Trust me there is plenty of junk food one can buy, as my family is about to find out in a few days, but here at school everyone has a healthy lunch.

Catch up

My computer is still malfunctionisto so I'll try this from my iPod. There are some moments I know I'll forget if I don't post them soon.

This is the river I bike along side as I go to the hundred yen shop. It goes a looong way like this. The grass grows taller than me!

That field yonder is where Minori and I jog. I like jogging somewhere less watched by traffic.

Minori's mom made me some Sumomo plum jam! It was sooo good. It had all of its natural flavor, no sugar added. So yummy. I didn't have much bread, so when I ran out I had a Garrett/Melancholia moment and was licking it off my finger.

I have to give out awards at the end of the month. Not knowing how elaborate they were supposed to be, I went overboard the first month. So now I have to live up to that standard since the parents are expecting it now lol. April penguins, May strawberries, June tigers, July bees. September will be a flower of some sort, so I'll start working on that one soon.

Five year old fumiya spent after care building a slide in my room.

I wish I had pictures of my kid's towels they bring for pool time. When they're all dried off, and they waddle back into class to change, there's a pikachu, a mermaid, many Disney capes, an Australian octonauts hoodie, and even a few snap on dress towels. So cute!! If I could share images of the kids, I'd be taking photos all the time, but I can't, so I rarely take photos.

A much appreciated weekend

There is so much I want to say about this weekend, and I've tried to type it a number of times.  But it seems that there are certain subjects that I'd rather keep in my journal. But I can say that I am extremely thankful to know Ms. Mihoko, Ms. Minori, and Ms. Minori's family. They are some of the most thoughtful people I have ever known, and I only wish I could find better ways to show them how much I appreciate them.

Ok so here's what I feel I can write about. Ms. Minori and her family invited me to stay at their house for the weekend. Ms. Minori and I went jogging Friday night, and then we hurried and showered at her house before we went out for dinner and karaoke with Ms. Mihoko. Can I quickly say that my showering experience was a completely new one. It was so interesting!

It looked very much like this, except the bathtub had 2 lids on it, covering it up.  You don't get in the bathtub to clean yourself, you get in the bath to relax.  But you have to be clean before you get in the tub, so you sit on a stool and shower.  It's amazing how something as simple as a shower can remind you that things are done differently all over the world.

Anyways, Karaoke.  We sang so much stuff! Takarazuka, David Bowie, Billy Joel, It's a Small World (long story ha ha), Beyonce, Annie, and some Jay-Z.  I also worked on my speed with reading Hiragana during the Japanese and Korean songs we sang.

It's very much like this, though every place is different.

Afterwards, Ms Minori and I walked back to her house since it was close by. The streets were very safe, even at 2:30am.  In the morning, Minori's mom had this amazing breakfast waiting for us. Toast with tons of different things we could put on top.  I had lettuce, tomato, and egg, and ....dang.... something else for breakfast as well. I'm trying to write it all down quickly because I know I'm starting to forget already. It's cause SO MUCH happened! At breakfast, I got to meet her Father, who I'd never seen before.  He was so sweet and nice!  So many things about my experience reminded me of being at home with my family. Their house was beautiful!  It was bigger on the inside, I swear. There were western-ish rooms, and traditional Japanese-tatami-mat rooms as well. Minori's mother is an amazing artist and sculptor.  Her paintings had a similar style to Uncle Peder, and I liked them a lot.  She loved sculpting very small pieces, and they were all over the house.  I fell in love with her vegetable pieces.  They were so detailed, and so small! I wish I had taken photos of the kitchen and living room, it was very homey. I loved it. And one of my favorite things about the house was the plum tree in the back.

There is a plum tree growing right outside their living room, and they built a balcony around it.  They had all sorts of potted plants sitting everywhere, and it was very pretty to sit and look at. Ms Minori had planned on going swimming with her older sister Saturday morning, and I had asked if I could stay at her house and sketch the plum tree. Which I did. It was so nice to just sit still and concentrate on something like drawing. Her parents were inside playing with their little year old grandson Kiyoshiro, who is so CUTE!  He was pretty nervous around me, because my facial features were so alien to him. And I could hear Minori's Mom creep up behind me to see how I was doing.  I kept hearing her say "Kirei!" which means beautiful. So I'm glad someone other than myself liked the sketch :-)

When Minori and her sister got back, we ordered some sushi.  2 giant sushi platters!  I tried every flavor, and they were all delicious of course. Sushi isn't limited to just fish. They have egg and corn sushi too, and Minori was telling me about beef sushi in some places.  Interesting. The egg pieces were so big that I was pretty bad at handling them with my chopsticks. But everything else I was fine with. I've been getting plenty of practice, but man, the things they can do with chopsticks. I can't figure how they chop stuff up with one hand. Someday!!! Poor little Kiyoshiro, he found a little dab of wasabi on a plate and put it in his mouth.  His mom and grandma both dove to try to take it out of his mouth, but he had wiped it on his teeth. It was one of those moments where you are are saying, "awww poor guy" while also giggling at the silly thing he did. Just when you thought he'd learned his lesson, he tried reaching for some spicy Kim Chi the next day lol. This time his mom got to it before he did ha ha ha.

After lunch, Minori, her sister and I went to rent some DVD's and get some groceries. I told her about how America has switched to things like Netflix and RedBox, and how I wish we still had DVD stores.  They had such a huuuuuge selection!  It was awesome!  I rented Totoro.  Totoro to Japan is like Star Wars is to America.  Pretty much everyone has seen it. I'd never seen it, and a replica house from the movie is really close to where I live.  So I wanted to see the movie before I went to see the house. I'm actually watching it as I blog, and I am loving it for so many reasons.  Movies by Hayao Miyazaki have always been favorites of mine, the music is beautiful, and it captures LOTS of small things about Japan that aren't listed in any tourist book.  Like the bus stop they wait at.  There's a bus stop identical to that one just outside my apartment. And at night, you can hear the exact same toads croaking. The little red bibs around the necks of the shrine animals....even the fox statues at one of the shrines made me think of Inari Taishi in Kyoto.  I can even guess the month this movie takes place in, based on rice paddies and flowers growing.  I am LOVING the details!!! I'm having to watch it in Japanese, but I am pretty proud of myself because I understand a lot of it. 

Anyways, they had tons of dvd's and cd's you could rent.  No takarazuka lol I looked. Interestingly, you can rent tons of American TV shows, but each episode is rented separately. When we got back, we watched a movie and I talked with Minori's Dad about various stuff.  He reminded me a lot of my Dad, so I liked him a lot. We picked some plums too. He would climb up into the tree, clip off some branches, and lower them down to us.  We hung them on some hanging rails for a plum picking event the next day. I was very happy being outside, pruning a tree with Ms. Minori's Dad. It is something I would do with mine.

Dinnertime rolled around, and I got to meet Minori's brother.  He is working on his English, so we did lots of talking.  He was very interested in the world, and America, and how Americans viewed other countries and such.  We covered lots of subjects. We also talked about Japan. He told me that Kyoto and Tokyo and Kyoto are in Japan but kind of their own places, if that makes sense.  He said that they are fun places to go, but they represent specific sides of Japan, not the day-to-day Japan. Anyways for dinner we had what they said was a typical Japanese dinner.  Nikujaga, Ghost Fish, Konnyaku, seaweed, and rice. It was all delicious.  Nikujaga had beef, potato, carrot, and onion.  I found a photo that looks kind of like it, but Minori's mother is an AMAZING cook, and her's looked much better.

 I can't remember the name of the fish, but her Dad jokingly called it a ghost fish because it was so white. He's a big fan of fishing, and had caught some of them in the nearby part of the ocean. Konnyaku, aka Devil's Tongue Jelly, is made from potato starch, and I was told that it was verrrrry healthy for you. It's got a very bland flavor, so you serve it with this really tasty mustard.  I was a fan, although this is the hardest thing I've ever tried to pick up with chopsticks. Eventually I had to just stab it ha ha ha!

And then some seaweed and rice, but you know what those look like. It was the first time I'd had straight cooked seaweed, and I was surprised that it didn't taste at all like that seaweed smell I've seriously almost forgotten. The seaweed here tastes good.

After dinner, Minori, her brother and I sat up late and chatted about various stuff, and somehow we got on the subject of fireworks. That led to Minori's brother grabbing a bunch of fireworks and the whole family and I went out back and lit a bunch!  They have a big variety of sparklers!  There are the ones we have in America, as well as some that only shoot in one direction. You should shove them in water and they wouldn't go out, they'd keep going!  So cool. There were some attached to paper machine guns, and they rattled off like a machine gun would. There were special ones you lit at the end which were pretty cool.  They were very small and frail, and you lit the bottom, not the top.  They glowed faintly and had very faint sparks coming off the bottom.  Eventually the lit up part falls off.  You're supposed to light them with other people and then have a competition to see who's sparkler falls off last.  Whoever's sparkler holds dripping the longest gets to make a wish. After the fireworks, we watched a movie called Snow Piercer.  It's made in Korea, with a bunch of American, English, and Korean people.  I didn't get to finish because I got tired, but I am hoping to finish it at some point. Tilda Swinton does another fantastic transformation into a completely different person.  Her accent is completely hidden.  That woman is an amazing actress!!!

The whole time I was staying there, I was getting gifts.  Minori gave me all sorts of things, just to be nice, and her Mother gave me my favorite sculpted piece that she'd made. 

 I was overwhelmed with how sincere and giving everyone was.  Ms. Minori, her mother, her father, her sister, and her brother did all they could to make me feel welcome.  I felt very cared about, it felt like I was back at home. 

I got to sleep in this room, on a traditional futon.  Honestly, I found it to be very comfortable. I had a fan blowing at my feet, and I was in heaven. The next morning, we had lots of prep work to be done. Minori had invited all the teachers over for plum picking and lunch.  Another delicious breakfast, and then I got to help prepare.  I helped make some ebi rice balls, and some Korean pancakes.  When the teachers arrived, we all feasted!

There were three different types of Onigiri rice (shrimp, herb, and pickled plum***(my fav)), and a few other dishes that couldn't fit on the table. so they were kept in the kitchen.  there was so much food! And it was all delicious!

During lunch, one of the teachers was telling me about a plot to one of the previous christmas plays done at the school.  It was made up by a teacher who loved sci-fi, and it made me laugh out loud.  The teacher had done a spoof of Alien vs Predator, called Elf vs Reindeer.  Apparently there were robots, and even a Cthulhu ha ha ha ha!!!!

After Lunch, we all got out and picked plums.  There were so many! Then we packed up and got ready to leave. I left there with a giant bag of sweet plums, numerous gifts, and a very high regard of the Higashi family. I wish I could have done or said more to thank them for such a great weekend. I felt so welcomed the whole weekend, it meant so much to me, and it really lifted my spirits. Now I have to work on finding a way to thank them all!