Iroiro na Mono

ya-ho. herm. a lot of things done over the last week, most of which have escaped my recollection... had some more philly cheese steaks with the ladies on valentines day. in japan, on valentines day, the girls give chocolates to the boys, and then the boys give chocolates on "white day", march 14th. i think we mostly talked about typical valentines day crap - what a pain in the damn buttocks developing feelings for someone tends to be, also differing dating rituals between taiwan and america, how people in taiwan and maybe most of asia don't "date" really, they just decide they want to be a couple first and then go do things together. there was a little valentines party the next night with a few performances and a cake baking contest.

saturday, woke up pretty early to head out to happo-cho for another english teaching thing at an elementary school. i had to teach "head, shoulders, knees and toes" to the whole class, up in front of everyone, alone, by myself, solo, very slowly and several times over. a little embarrassing, but fun i guess. then we talked about our homes for a while as some of the japanese students who came along helped translate for the people who came along from taiwan, china, and mongolia. all i could think of was "uurrt... we got lakes...annnn urrrrt... ". then the aiu people ate lunch in the principals office, and a big group of the 4th or 5th graders asked very sheepishly if they could come in and touch my face hairs. they were astonished! a beard! we left there and went to a nearby community center to make another somethingorother out of peanuts, sticks, hot glue and plastic eyeballs for some inexplicable reason, then headed home.

sunday, had to get up ridiculously early again to go out to a town called sagata, which means "alcohol field" to see some local kabuki for a little matsuri. there was a lot going on, though, new area, a few temples, food stalls, so kind of watched the kabuki along with everything else simultaneously, rather than being drawn into it. the tako yaki, fried octopus balls, had entire baby octopi in them, rather than the usual tiny octopus chunks. i did not try them. after the kabuki, went out to eat at a chain place, then the group went to see the mummified monks i went to see a few months ago. the people who had already seen them went to check out a huge park, shrine, and oservation area next to the mummified monk's temple. i fell a little more in love with japan while standing under a 50 foot tall gate, and then walking through it along narrow snowy paths that led to smaller shrines with their own small red torii, up over little hills to find more little shrines, an abandoned little park, a 19th century western style doctors office, and an observation tower with a view of the ocean and a nearby harbor, which was obscured by a 10 minute blizzard thar cropped up out of nowhere. on the way back, we stopped at a river we had stopped at the last time i went to see the monks to feed the thousands of ducks and geese living there while they flew onto our shoulders, ate from our hands, and shat upon us.

on monday night, i went to a nabe birthday party for a guy from okinawa named ryota. nabe is basically the same as a chinese hot pot, except with japanese ingredients like mochi and kiritanpo. people nab what they want from the pot, and then more is added. there was a student there who just returned from winona state, and she brought some laffy taffy and twizzlers from america for the japanese students to try. everyone there took one bite of the stuff, made a face and a wretching noise, and then collectively spit it in the garbage. they said it tasted like erasers. i explained that i used to eat laffy taffy by the damn bucketfull, and they looked at me like i was seriously damaged. the most popular japanese snack items are fish paste/cheese sticks and dried squid, which i've aquired a taste for, and they said it's strange that sometimes americans eat snack food without beer.

in the near future, another field trip and tentative plans a-plenty including karaoke, cooking, drinking some chu-hi, and wandering around the city.