Catching Up

I'm sorry that it has been so long sicne I last wrote on my blog. I'm just really not good at journalling and blogging.

Living in Japan has still be amazing. I'm no longer buying like tourist, which is good. This way I can actually make a bit of money off of my scholarship.

During Golden Week (GW), a week of Japan's national holidays that are somewhat of a spring break for the country, we kicked it off with going to get parfaits (huge parfaits! They give Americans grief for our large portions!) with my tutor, Natsue, at an Italian styled restaurant. It was really good.

On Sunday of GW, Rachel, Christina, Aki (our friend from Taiwan) and I went to Yonezawa Matsuri (matsuri means festival) and met up with Christina's tutor, Risa. We wandered around the shops and saw many cool things. We then went to the big Jinja, Shinto shrine, to do a traditional prayer. First you cleanse yourself in the traditional way. Then you walk up the stairs and put in a small money donation. Next you take the big rope and ring the gong or bell twice. Then you clap twice and then you can send your prayer. Then we were able to see a famous battle reenactment. We were kind of far away, so we ended up leaving early and going to an Okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is like a Japanese omelet. At the restaurant, they bring you the bowl of what you ordered and you make it yourself on the grill in the middle of the table. For someone as poorly skilled at the art of cooking as I am that was quite a frightening prospect. But I flipped it fine and it actually didn't fall apart one me! Unfortunately, this day was the day my camera finally stopped working. Rest in peace little camera!

The next day, we went to participate in a race that we have been preparing for almost since we got into Yamagata. The Kaminoyama Race was a short train ride away. For this race, you have to dress up in a costume that fits whatever theme you pick and you run in pairs, carrying a palquinn with 20 kilgrams in the middle. We were the Gaikoku Cats, which means foreigner cats. So we all dressed up as black and white cats and you have to decorate your palaquinn to fit your theme. Some of the costumes were so intense! During the race, we had to run with people that were better at Japanese than us because they sometimes shout trivia at you while you're running and you have to answer it or there are little assignments that you have to do during your leg. During my leg, we had to drink 3 bottles of this carbonated cider. My partner almost died having to run more after drinking it. After the race was over, many of the news teams wanted to interview us, because we were foreigners and they don't get many of those. Some of us made it on national TV! The most of me that made it was my arm when I was carrying the palaquinn over to the car. Next was the awards ceremony where we actually won an award, a special award. By special award they really just mean a special award with no additional attached meaning. We think that we won it because not only were we the only team with white girls, white people at all, we were all white. Not even the foreigner guys' team had any white people. But, because we one that award, we got a bottle of Sake, a trophy, a certificate and we won enough money to take about 20 people to a fancy restaurant, rent out the traditional room and each get the equivalent of $50 each from the money that was left over. Not bad, eh? It pays to be white.

The last thing that we did for Golden Week was to take all of our tutors and the two going to CSU next semester to bowling! It was so much fun, but the Japanese people whipped out incredible skill out of nowhere to completely demolish the Americans. So much for it being the American sport. You know its bad when my score was half of my team of 4's score. The two girliest girls of the group were by far the best of the girls and Hideto was amazing as well. Apparently he would go once every week his freshman year of college. Luckily, on the second game, we were able to mix it up. My team was doing well and winning until the last frame, when all of the sudden Hideto get's 2 strikes and 9 pins in the last frame. He pulled his team ahead and they one by 1 point! Hideto's on my team next time.

After bowling, we decided to make them go to the attached arcade to play Dance Dance Revolution, because three of them had never played. One of the stereotypes we had of Japanese people was that they had all played at least once. So we decided to introduce all of them too it. The Americans did better than the Japanese at Dance Dance Revolution. Which country do you think is the nerdier one now?

The Sunday after Golden Week, which was Mother's day, we went out to Karaoke with Hideto, Hideto's friend Jiro, Zaiga (a girl from Latvia), and Aki. Man did we ever bust it out. Jiro surprised all of us and was the first to go. Normally Japanese people are very shy, but it really helped to make all of comfortable enough to sing. Aki-san impressed all of us when she puleld out this amazing Chinese rap song.

The Wednesday after Mother's Day, we got to go to a very Traditional Tea house for culture class. It was so beautiful inside and especially outside. The landscape was beautiful. It was so frustrating to not have my camera, but I felt betterr once I found out that we would be coming back next week to put on Kimono. So the same place of the Kimono pictures is the Tea House.

Except on Tuesday, two Japanese girls stopped us to ask if we would mind helping them practice their English. So we met Shohi, Tami and their sensei. We have set up to meet every Tuesday at 4:30 to help them practice English and us to practice our Japanese. They will speak English to us and we will speak Japanese to them. We will see how well that goes. They also were realyl excited to meet us. So we are in the process of setting up a time to watch a movie and have an okonomiyaki party at Shohi's apartment. They were super nice.

We didn't do much else until one week later when we went back to the tea house to put on Kimono. This was on May 20th, Matt and my one year anniversary of dating! So I wanted to do something special for him even though I am so far away and he won't be getting his gift until he flies out. That is why I am holding the sign in one of the kimono pictures. It was so intense to put on the kimono and not to mention hot! I was already feeling really hot in just shorts! Then to put on layers of Kimono? But they were so pretty. I was one of the last people to be put into my kimono that was chosen for us by picking out a random number from a tin can and that was our kimono. But I was considered to be a big person, os they had to switch me to another one. I ended up being really happy, because the first one was mostly yellow and I look terrible in yellow.

Instead, I got a marriage kimono with the long sleeves and everything! The old women were funny when they were helping me to put on my kimono, because they didn't think that I understood what they were saying about my chest size. One of them kept smacking my butt and I was thinking "no matter how much you smakc it, it won't get smaller." If you ever want to put on a kimono with little Japanese ladies helping you, this is the normal treatment. I had two to five people helping me put the kimono on, but normally it was four. This was weird and kind of scary because everyone else at most had two and usually just had one. But mine took so much longer to put on. So when I walked out of the room, I got an applause from the entire class.

Next we had a lecture on the history of kimono and then a demonstration of tying an obi properly with help and by yourself. I could never do it by myself. It is so hard. After that, they wanted to show us a traditional marriage picture and I was the one that got to do it! They were so picky on the placement of your feet, how to show off the kimono, where each individual finger goes and everything. So, now I have a husband. I got married! It was funny because the week before when we were doing tea ceremony, our sensei was joking about Gon-san (a Korean friend) and I getting married when they were describing how many weddings take place there. Then the next week we actually did! Creepy foreshadowing. Then we got to walk around and take a bunch of pictures. It was so much fun. The woman who helped me take off my kimono was really nice and kept telling me how good my Japanese was when I was able to understand her questions and answer properly. She was cute.

Not much else has happened.

Today we are going to Kaiten Zushi, the sushi that comes around on the conveyer belt and you chose the ones you want, with our Latvian friends, Aki and some other gaikokujin (foreigners). We're really excited.

Then on Sunday, we are going to Yamadera (look it up on wikipedia) to climb 1000 stairs... yay. Then afterwards we are going to a bar with all of our of-age Japanese friends.

Then the Sunday after we're heading back to the Karaoke Box to meet some more Japanese friends.

Jya Mata! (See you later!)