Voyage Junkie

It has been some time since my last post.  Matt and I are frantically cleaning and packing, getting rid of things and making seemingly endless runs to the post office.  It hardly seems like it's been nearly two years since we first laid eyes on our temporary home, yet here we are, at the end of our run as ALTs.  I won't miss the job, but I will miss the friends we made here.  Japan affected me deeply and I am grateful for the opportunity to live, work, and travel in this incredible country.  There will be time for reflective essays later, when we have toured Europe and are again in the ranks of America's unemployed youth... for now we must continue packing and cleaning. To keep you busy as you wait for the thrilling conclusion of our world travels (did I mention we have quite the itinerary planned?), here are some shots from this year's plum blossom festival in Bairin Koen.  We visited on March 11, 2012, which you may know was the first anniversary of t...

I had a love-and-friend-filled birthday this year!  I got flowers from a student whose father runs a flower shop, four of us with the same birthday exchanged gifts, and I went out to sing karaoke and eat delicious rice flour crepes!  I ate a green tea cheesecake crepe (amazing).  Below, the karaoke group picture.      L-R: of course us, Sachiko and Io-chan, Shio, Atsushi, and Kiri. My birthday present to myself?  A rice cooker cake!  Skeptics: yes, that's it, in the rice cooker just post.  Recipe: 200 grams gluten-free hotcake mix, 1 egg, 1/2 cup maple syrup, 1/2 cup canola oil, 1/2-1 cup plain yogurt.  I added 3 mashed bananas, 1 small package dark chocolate chips, and unsweetened dried coconut (topping).  You simply mix it all together, drop it in a slightly oiled rice cooker, and start the cycle!  My cooker has a cake setting on it, which runs for 45 minutes (in the winter it takes 2 cycles).  If you don't ha...

Once again, amid tales of forthcoming apocalypse, we've rung in the next year!  Last year was incredibly cold and a bit snowy, so we watched fireworks from our balcony and didn't do much.  This year was mild, and our chiropractor lent us a bike for Matt to ride (I already had one given to me by a good friend who returned to America over the summer), so we had no excuse to stay in like the homebodies we are.  We rode around the mountain to Inaba Jinja, a prominent Gifu shrine.  I was amazed by the beauty of the place as well as the liveliness of the street lined with vendors.  I'm used to visiting Kyoto, Tokyo, Osaka, and other such cities, where there are tons of historical sites that draw huge numbers of visitors each year, but even counting the Nobunaga Festival I've never seen this sort of gathering in Gifu before.  To the left is the view from the first shrine torii  down through the street of vendors.  We arrived about 11:25 and took a ...

The ladies' side of the table.... On Christmas Eve, we went to a holiday party with my dance teacher's family.  It was Yuko and Mr. Shinoda, Shio and her husband Atsushi, and  Atsushi's parents.  We ate at an Okinawan restaurant, and the Shinodas drank, and drank, and drank.  It was a wonderfully fun time, and left Matt and me with the impression that we'd been adopted by this Japanese family.  At one point, I referred to Yuko sensei as my "Japanese mother" and Shio as my "Japanese sister," which they loved.  Mr. Shinoda kept trying to convince Matt and me that he could marry us in Japan, and that I should wear a shiromuku  (a white wedding kimono ) and wataboshi  (a Japanese bridal hood ). The men, making faces. The Shinodas, and Atsushi's father, kept downing beers all night.  Sometime last year Matt and I taught Shio the term "under the table," and she brought it out multiple times during the evening to give her parents a h...

We went to a holiday party at Ai sensei's house yesterday.  You'll remember Ai from other posts, most notably ones having to do with festivals, as we tend to go with her to local festivals.  After last year's lantern festival, her family invited us over for dinner.  Apparently they've wanted to have us back since then, and we finally were all free at the same time (more than a year later).  Ai had recently bought a new puppy, named Marron (French for "chestnut," which the Japanese use interchangeably with their native word kuri ), and she was an adorable bundle of energy!  It was fun to play with her all night. Here's two teachers at my school: Morozumi sensei and Ai sensei.  They started dating sometime before I arrived at Nagamori, I don't exactly know when, and they've decided to get married in 2012.  This was the first time he met her parents, so he was incredibly nervous all night.  She assured him, as they drove us home later that nig...

A wonderful new crepe restaurant at JR Gifu Station (I say new, as if it hasn't been open since September) serves rice flour crepes!  There's a wide selection of sweet crepes and a small selection of savory crepes, plus a number of seasonal crepes to choose from.  I've been wanting to take a picture and blog about this awesome place since I first tried it!  On our most recent visit, I couldn't resist one of the current seasonal crepes, the ベリーとベリー, or berry and berry.  It was fresh strawberries and blueberries layered with a hint of vanilla custard, topped with more berries and a sprig of mint.  Since my family's most enduring Christmas tradition (involving food, anyway) is blueberry pancakes, served before presents on Christmas morning, this crepe really got me into the Christmas spirit.  And it's so pretty!

To use a grammatical structure I must teach in English class: this is a hat given to me by a crazy teacher.  Check the accessories, i.e. the bright gold feather necklace and the earrings.  Oh Japan.

I participated in another dance concert on December 18th, which also happened to be the Artistic Director's 68th birthday!  She's such a spunky woman who still dances like crazy and does handstands.  She looks at least 10 years younger than she is, and acts about 20 years younger.  I hope I am half as ambulatory and energetic as she is if I reach her age. We held her party at Godmother's, which is turning into one of our party mainstays.  We were served wonderful pizza and pasta, and apparently bought tons of sparkling wine near the end of the evening (Japanese people like to get their drink on, especially for birthdays and special events like dance concerts). Let's go around the room.  First we have two little girls (of four).  These two were the older two, and also the more obnoxious two.  The one in stripes was completely insufferable during dinner.  She refused to eat any vegetables or healthy food, demanded several slices of pizza befor...

'Matter of fact, it's all dark.

This kind of name is far more common in Japan than I'm comfortable with...

We went to the Mino Lantern Festival for the second time last weekend.  Matt and I went with two teachers from my school.  First stop: a very beige dinner at a beautiful traditional restaurant.  It was all very delicious and I didn't get sick off of it, which was a nice change.  Still, I don't really like it when all my food is beige and soft.  Something about that just doesn't sit right.  There was, however, a great rice soup with special rice made in a traditional stove, and kaki  for dessert.  The kaki , or persimmon, were crunchy and bright orange, so I ended the dinner with some color and texture, at least.  After dinner, we headed to the lanterns!  They were beautiful, and very different from last year's .  The only down side?  It rained a ton that day, so there were rain smudges all over the lantern cases. The streets this year were very quiet.  We ran into a few other pedestrians, but nothing compared to last y...

Chisato, me, and Masumi. Two of my favorite girls invited me to a dance performance of theirs last weekend.  The style is called buyou , a generic term used for traditional Japanese dance forms.  As we know it, modern buyou  is based on traditional performances by  kabuki players.  Those kabuki  players (all men, by the way) lifted the dances from the geisha  of the time, popularizing them in the theaters.  It's a classic example of the relationship between female prostitution and dance, as historically, dance forms done by women were relegated to brothels, brought to the stage by male performers, and finally reclaimed by women.  Today, women of all ages learn and perform buyou .  This honors the beauty of the history and serves to elevate the geisha  to the level they deserve: that of artist.  (To read more about the relationship between dance and prostitution, read "Something In The Way She Moves," by Wendy Buonaventura.)...