Mauricio & Kay

A couple of months ago, my friend Mauricio sent me an e-mail surprising me with the news that he and his wife, Kay, were planning to come to Japan for a trip. I actually thought he was joking at first (Mauricio, you do have a history of jokes and kidding people, you know!) but when he sent me back an e-mail with their schedule, I realized he was serious. So, not long after that, I happily greeted my friends Mauricio & Kay in Tokyo (about five weeks ago). We spent the weekend together, traveling to different areas of the city. It was great to see them, and fun for me to be able to show people around one of my adopted cities (even though I certainly am not an expert). We met up on Saturday afternoon, relaxed and caught up a bit in their hotel, and then took the train to Ueno Park and Shibuya.

The first picture is actually from the next day when we took a tour around the city, and I'll save that description for another post, but I think it's a great picture of Mauricio and Kay, so I started with that one. The next picture is in Ueno Park, not far from the zoo. The picture with the shrine and the video monitor behind it is near their hotel in Shinagawa. I thought it was an interesting contrast between an old image of Japan and a very modern one. The last picture is in Shibuya near the Hachiko statue. After walking around the district and being amazed by the energy and scale of the neighborhood, we were walking back to the train station. Near the entrance there was a group of people holding up signs (as you can see in the picture) that said "free hugs". I thought it was very odd, so of course, took a picture. Since then, I've checked online, and it's apparently a recent, semi-worldwide movement; check this link if you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Hugs_Campaign

More later . . .

Nasu (Northern Tochigi)

About three weeks ago I took a trip to the Nasu area of Tochigi. I visited my former student, now friend, Hiromu. He had visited here in Utsunomiya a couple of weeks before, and we talked about getting together again in his city, so when I realized that I had a day during my spring vacation that I had no other commitments, I decided that would be a good day to visit. Hiromu and I made a plan, and on April 1st I took the train there. The shinkansen goes there and takes only 17 minutes, but costs about $30, so the local train taking 45 minutes and costing only about $8 seemed like a much better choice! Since I'm such a roller coaster maniac, and there's a fairly large amusement park there, that was on the list of things to do that day, of course. The weather forecast for Utsunomiya was predicting a warm, sunny, comfortable day.

Did I mention that it was April 1st? The weather was about to play a big April Fools joke on me...


After about 20 minutes on the train, I noticed that the weather was getting much worse-dark and cloudy. About 10 minutes after that, the train traveled through a small town where there was snow on the ground, which really surprised me. The closer I got to Nasu, the worse the weather got. Hiromu met me at the station, and as we were driving away from the parking lot, the rain slowly started to change to a mix of rain and snow. We decided to drive to the amusement park anyway, and see what the conditions were like, and well . . . . you can see the picture! I guess I didn't realize how much higher the elevation is in Nasu!

Obviously, the amusement park plan was canceled. Nasu is known for having many different kinds of museums. One that I had heard of before, and that Hiromu had never visited, is a group of three "trick art" museums. We decided that would be a good, unexpectedly snowy day activity.

The two photos with paintings in them are completely flat (2D) but have a strong 3D look because of the technique used where part of the picture extends beyond the frame. The other two photos use an optical illusion and a trick. (I'm not actually doing a handstand in the middle of an art museum.) See if you can figure them out!

After the museums, we went to an onsen, which felt really good after the cold, gloomy weather. Then Hiromu's father called and invited us to come and have dinner at their family pension. From previous descriptions that I had heard of pensions in Japan, and from the word itself, I expected that it would be something like a "B and B" (Bed and Breakfast) in America. I was very surprised; it's more like a small hotel! It turns out that in Japan, the word hotel is usually only used for structures that are four stories tall or higher. So even though this building has many guest rooms, and more than one floor, it's not considered a hotel. In any case, it's a wonderful place! Kuroda-san (Hiromu's father) is an excellent chef, and served us a delicious steak dinner, the best I've had in at least a year! As we were finishing our dinner, Hiromu's mother arrived and spent some time talking with us too. Kuroda family, thank you again for a great evening!

So, in spite of the snow, the day turned out great! (And I'll visit the amusement park another time. . . !)

Mount Kogashi

I'll post something more recent before trying to catch up on older trips and pictures: on Saturday my friend from church, Shouji, and I went to Mount Kogashi. It's about a half-hour drive into the countryside from Utsunomiya. (Previous visitors: it's a little further beyond the town of Oya where the huge Kannon statue is.) At the foot of the mountain there's a beautiful park with a reservoir surrounded by trees, including several sakura (cherry trees). They were still blooming when we visited, and that's one of the pictures I'm including. The other panorama photo is from the top of the mountain (or very large hill). The third picture is Shouji near the summit. Shouji, thanks for again for taking me-I had a great time!

Part three of Kappabashi--when we WEREN'T in Kappabashi

After leaving the Hanayashiki amusement park, As we were approaching the main area, we walked a few blocks to the nearby temple. a small group of geisha (or possibly maiko--click the link to Wikipedia for more info if you're interested) was leaving one of the buildings. That's not an uncommon scene here, but it made for a good photo in any case. One of my favorite pictures that I took while I was there is the cat sitting on the pedestal of the statue. There are quite a few wild cats at this temple, but I mean wild more in the sense of living on their own; the one in the picture was actually very friendly. At one end of the temple complex, there's a LOOOOOOONG shopping arcade that is frequently jammed with people--that was certainly the case the day we visited!

After leaving Asakusa, we took the train to the opposite side of "downtown" Tokyo in the district called Roppongi Hills. The last picture was taken on the observation deck of the Mori Building (where I went to the modern art museum previously). I posted pictures from that viewpoint before, but they were all night views--it was very cool to see the same view during the day.

Kappabashi's neighbor

Well, really the neighborhood next to the Kappabashi neighborhood, Asakusa. That didn't really make much sense. In any case, after visiting Kappabashi, Mondo and I went to Asakusa and visited Hanayashiki, which, as you can see in the picture, is the oldest amusement park in Japan! (if you count the fact that it opened in 1853 as a flower park.) It does have the oldest, continuously operating roller coaster in Japan, which you can see me riding in the second picture. You can also see that many of the other riders were children--not a very scary coaster, but fun from a roller coaster history point of view! Mondo didn't go on the roller coaster (not so creatively named "ro-ra-ko-suta-") because he wanted to take pictures of my coaster adventure (absolutely NOT because he is scared of roller coasters! Hmm.... uh.... well... ) (By the way, Mondo, you took a great picture!)

God blessed us with a coupon for free entrance tickets (good that day only) that was being passed out close to the train station which was great, because otherwise we would have had to pay about $7.00 each just to get into the park so I could ride one roller coaster. (Thank you!)

Randy and Diane, you can see the hotel where we stayed in the background of the third picture.


More later . . .

Kappabashi

A few weeks ago, Mondo and I went to Tokyo to hang out for the day. We spent time in Kappabashi, Asakusa, and Roppongi. In this post, I'll focus on the first part of our trip in Kappabashi.

Kappabashi-dori is famous for two things. The first is "kappa", a mythological creature
from Japanese legends that has a plate shaped head and loves to eat cucumbers (and children)--yeah, very strange, if you're interested, here's a link to the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_%28folklore%29
The second is kitchen supply stores, including ones that sell the food models that are displayed in front of many restaurants in Japan. It might sound like an odd combination (well, I guess actually it is a little odd) but it was fun and interesting. The pictures are two famous buildings with appropriate themes for the neighborhood, a kappa statue (there are MANY lining the streets all over the district) and a food sample store. Click on the food sample picture if you want to see how realistic the models are. They really are amazing . . . and expensive.

I'll continue the trip in the next post.

Japanese Burritos!

As I've mentioned (several times!) before, one of the only food items I miss here in Japan is Mexican food. When I visited America in December/January I had planned on bringing back cans of refried beans, which are nearly impossible to find here. I realized that could end up making my suitcase MUCH too heavy, so I decided to bring back dry pinto beans instead, so I can make my own refried beans. Yesterday and today I worked on my first try.

Cooking the beans was the easy part; time-consuming, but easy. They turned out pretty tasty. I experimented with different seasonings and ended up adding red chili powder, paprika, cumin, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I finally found a grocery store that sells a brand of salsa that's made locally, so it's not too expensive. For sour cream (which is rather difficult to find here) I substituted plain yogurt. The hardest part was tortillas. I have seen them here (only frozen, not fresh), but they are crazy expensive. I thought about what I could use as a substitute, and finally realized, since I'm in Utsunomiya (which is considered to be the gyoza/pot sticker capitol of Japan) I should use gyoza wrappers! They're not too different from tortillas, except for their size. I had originally thought that I could make very small versions of rolled burritos, but quickly realized that would be impossible. My compromise: put beans and cheese on a gyoza wrapper and then top it with another and fry both sides. So they ended up more like what some people call tostadas, but they were delicious anyway.

Maybe next time I'll splurge and buy real tortillas-it would definitely save some time . . .

America Vacation 2007 (and 2008): San Jose

(Note: I've tried several times to upload pictures, and it's not working tonight, so I'll have to add the pictures later. Update: the pictures are finally uploaded, but smaller size than usual. As always, click on a picture for a larger version.)

On January 2nd, I flew from Portland to San Jose, California to visit family and stay with my cousins. I stayed much of the time at Elaine & Tim's house and also visited Vic & Mary's place (uncle & aunt). My other "grew up through childhood together beloved cousin", Paula, (sister of Elaine) also spent an extended weekend there with us.

Elaine picked me up at the airport on a beautiful, warm, California afternoon with the greeting, "enjoy the weather today-a storm's coming from Alaska tomorrow!" So we made as much as we could of the weather that afternoon and early evening. We went to a nearby park and played Bocce (an outdoor, Italian version of bowling-very fun!) and watched a beautiful sunset.

The next day we went to San Francisco to take our "What's Up Doc?" movie location tour. In spite of the beginning of the arrival of the storm and the rain it brought, we had a VERY fun time finding and taking pictures of locations from our favorite movie (our meaning "Elaine & I"-Tim,thanks for putting up with our craziness!). I have several pictures of that part of the trip, of course, but I'm going to make a whole separate entry for that adventure, possibly on my auxiliary blog. I'll keep you posted, so to speak.

Even though the weather got nasty (with wind so strong that it knocked down trees and cut the electricity at Tim & Elaine's house for several hours), Paula braved the storm and (thankfully!) arrived safely Friday evening. Much of the rest of the weekend was spent hanging out and playing games including Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and various new and old card games. I also showed pictures that I'd taken in Japan during different trips with visitors. Paula and Caitlin had to return home at the end of the weekend, and fortunately the storm had mostly passed through by then.

Other fun activities included playing a variety of funny Wii games ("Now what do I do with this controller?) and listening to old 45s of disco songs (you know, 7-inch 45-rpm records, those little records that only have one song on each side-they used to sell them so that when you heard a song on the radio that you liked you could just buy . . . oh, never mind . . . ) I had Mexican food three times and In-N-Out Burger, hurray!

So again, Elaine & Tim and Vic & Mary, thanks for hosting and for rides from and to the airport, and Paula, thanks for making a long drive for a short time to visit while I was there!!!! I had a great time!

America Vacation 2007: Portland-Christmas Lights, Friends and Chickens

On December 29th my sister and I drove back up to Portland. We looked at some beautiful Christmas lights (the picture is of an old house in Portland that they decorate with over 1,000,000 lights-very amazing place) and then hung out with my friends Betsy & Bryan. My sister stayed for a while that evening and we played Rock Band on the XBox-it was really fun, even though I didn't know all of the songs.

The rest of the weekend I stayed with and visited my friends Scott & Janelle (and Loene and Samuel!) and Doran & Vineeta. We watched movies, looked at pictures, talked, laughed and just generally had a great time! On Sunday I went to church and saw lots of other friends including Kent & Becky and Gale. I enjoyed catching up with everybody, and just relaxing in a familiar place.

On the way across town I took the picture I included of Pioneer Courthouse Square with the giant Christmas tree and the semi-famous Umbrella Man statue. Then I met my friends/Portland bosses Edmund & Carol for breakfast. They brought me up to date with what's going on with the school in Portland (LCIO/PBC) and I did the same with my experiences here.

And now.... the chickens. Why so many picture of chickens? Well, first of all, I just think chickens are funny. I don't know why, but they make me laugh; something about the way they walk or behave--I think they're very silly animals (well, and delicious too, now that I'm thinking about it!). These specific chickens are the pets / mini-farm / egg producers / (neighborhood attraction?) of my friends Jim, Marie, Kerry, Lucas and Nicolas (the official chicken lover). They invited me to their house for New Years Day with their family, and I spent a fun day with them. Thanks for including me in your family!

And thanks again to everyone in Portland for all the hospitality!

January 2nd I flew to San Jose, California to spend time with my cousins and uncle & aunt, for the last part of my vacation, which I'll save for next time.

America Vacation 2007: Springfield & Eugene--P.S.

Here are two links to videos that I took on Christmas Day with my family. They are both clips of us playing the card game "Pit".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6HE5D5IVuo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7NBQ3LZ_4E

America Vacation 2007: Springfield & Eugene

My flight from Narita to PDX was pretty calm and almost relaxing; probably due to the fact that it was Christmas Eve, the plane was only half full, so I got a seat with extra leg room, and there was even space to move to another area of the plane for a while and take a nap in two adjacent, empty seats. I'm pretty sure I watched a movie, but can't remember what it was-either I was tired, or the movie wasn't that memorable...

My sister was kind enough to take a VERY early drive from Eugene to Portland to pick me up. As we were driving down the freeway away from the airport towards downtown Portland, it struck me that it didn't seem like I had been away from Oregon for nine months. I had the thought "It seems like I was just here a couple of weeks ago!" which I thought was strange. But more and more I'm starting to think that time is what's strange--as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:11, God "has planted eternity in the human heart" (New Living Translation)--we were created as eternal beings. SO . . . no reverse culture shock, or at least not in the way I was expecting.

After a quick detour to check out my condominium in Portland, we headed to my parents' house in Springfield. After all my interest and amusement about KFC being a very popular Christmas dinner choice in Japan, and my assurances to everyone here that KFC is NOT an especially popular holiday dinner in America, for dinner on Christmas Eve my family had . . . KFC! I had a good laugh about that!

The next day, on Christmas, most of my immediate family came for dinner. We had a great time together, and the first picture shows people playing a crazy card game called "Pit", which is a favorite in my family. I showed everyone pictures of my travels during the summer when family visited me here, and it was fun to explain those adventures and remember my summer vacation.

Later in the week, my sister and I also had a good time at my brother, sister-in-law and nephew's house hanging out and playing another very fun card game. The last day before I left for Portland, my third brother and sister-in-law visited my parents' house (the third and fourth pictures) and we also looked at pictures and reminisced about their trip to Japan during the summer. The second picture shows their dog, Sunday, who cracked me up in his Santa costume. The last evening in Eugene I stayed at my sister's place (I just realized I can say that in Japanese! "watashi-no imouto-no tokoro ni tomarimashita" I'm learning-hurray!) and we had fun hanging out with her chinchillas and watching silly videos. She drove me back up to Portland the next day, but I'll save that for the next post . . .

(P.S. After fighting with this crazy software to get the pictures to appear in the right order, I finally gave up, so they might not appear in the order I mentioned in the post above, but I think it's pretty obvious.)

Gyoza Party

A quick detour from my America vacation blogging: last weekend some friends from church invited me to a gyoza and soba party. Some people in the United States now use the word gyoza, but others say "potsticker" or "Chinese dumpling". You can see from the pictures and video how they are made. I had made them once before in Portland; my friend Mondo showed me how. Unfortunately, I didn't get any video of making the soba noodles. Soba is buckwheat noodles served either hot or cold. We had the cold version. Everything was delicious! Takizawa family, thanks again for inviting me!













Here's a link to a video of us making the gyoza: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFod807KW_E

America Vacation 2007: Prequel

This is just going to be a short post to get me started on my Christmas vacation (February's half done-I'd better get Christmas posts done soon!).

After a couple of very busy weeks in the middle of December, I left for the United States on the 24th, which ended up being the longest Christmas Eve in my life. Not in the idiomatic sense of "oh, what a horrible day! That was the longest day of my life!" but in the chronological sense: I left Tokyo in the
mid-afternoon on the 24th and arrived in Portland at 7:00 am on the 24th. But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself-this is just supposed to be the prequel. On the way to the airport, Mondo and Aiko met me, and we spent a few hours hanging out at the Narita Temple, having lunch and waiting for my flight at the airport. Narita Temple is about a 15-minute drive from Tokyo/Narita airport.

The street lined with shops leading to the temple reminded me of a similar street in Kyoto where I visited last summer. Many of the restaurants lining the street serve eel, and you can see barrels of eels waiting to be filleted and turned into someone's meal. So, how do you feel? Does a real eel meal appeal? (sorry--I couldn't resist the rhyme)

The temple grounds are very beautiful, but we didn't have enough time to actually tour the temple itself-maybe on my next visit. After looking at the area, we had lunch at a little cafe (no eel-I had Italian food) and then headed for the airport.

Even More Snow!

The locals here tell me that last winter there wasn't any snow at all, so this is an unusual year. Just a quick link to another video of snow here. I was practicing using the "Windows Movie Maker" software, so it has several goofy text comments added in.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw98ggw2j_E

Tomorrow is a holiday, and I have the day off from school (its National Foundation Day; here's a link at Wikipedia if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Foundation_Day ), so I'll try to get some winter break vacation pictures posted.

More Snow In Utsunomiya

The weather report yesterday predicted snow for today, but there was a similar forecast last week and no snow ever fell, so I didn't expect much. When I woke up this morning, my room was noticeably lighter, so I opened the curtains and was surprised by how much snow had already fallen. Not that it suddenly looks like I'm living in the Alps, but it is beautiful. It's supposed to melt by this afternoon and be clear and sunny again by tomorrow--winter in Japan is MUCH drier than Oregon! All of these are pictures right around my house.