So since I am still trying to cover as much as possible within the first month without posting I am going to write about all of the people that have helped me over the past month. Literally everyone I have met so far (at least all of the adults) have tried to help me in one way or another adjust to my new lifestyle. However due to limited time and memory I am only going to write down what I found to be the most helpful or amusing interactions I have had with the Japanese people to this date. I should begin by telling you one of our first encounters with Nisshida Mama at her restaurant. She works at a Korean BBQ where you get to grill your own food right in the middle of your table. Nisshida Mama and I get along very well simply for the reason that we both love meat and I can’t really turn down anything she offers me. We went to this restaurant for the first time as a way to meet the 4th JET in Shinjo, Amanda. Amanda is from England and is one of the most British people I have ever met, which include a British accent, an actual love of the queen, and a general European view of the world. She was a science major and apparently quite smart, but she has been here one year and barely speaks any Japanese. However despite this one fact she was willing to do anything to help us acclimate to Shinjo, and if Kristin did not already know so much of this town it would have been very helpful.
When we headed over to the Korean BBQ I found out how bad of a restaurant choice it was considering out of the 4 of us I was the only one who actually ate meat. Peter and Kristin will eat fish but Amanda is a strict vegetarian, so I really don’t know why we went there. Anyway when Nisshida Mama found out I was the only one who was going to eat meat, and that I said I was willing to try anything she brought out an Andrew Zimmerman-esc dish of pig stomach and intestines. I am actually really grateful for that show because Mr. Zimmerman did teach me you can eat anything if you give it a shot, and I have to say that I really did like stomach. It was soft and had a lot of flavor, but I could not say the same about intestine. There is nothing wrong with it, but at the same time there is nothing good with it either, it is just a tough meat that tastes ok with a lot of sauce. I have been back there again and have had normal pieces of meat as well, and they are just as amazing. I figure at least once a month I am going to have to treat myself to this restaurant just so I don’t forget what real meat tastes like. Another great thing that came out of the night was that Nisshida Mama introduced me to her boss, who not only gave us some free food while we were there, but is also a Kendo instructor. I have not yet taken him up on his offer to teach, simply because of lack of time, but hopefully within the next week or so I can start taking lessons.
The next story was actually one of the most embarrassing times someone has offered to help me. It was my first Saturday in Shinjo, and I had thought that I would spend that day sleeping and getting ready for the next week. Nisshida Mama had another idea though, and she decided that it would be better to take Kristin and I shopping for food that week. Unfortunately for me, I did not know the door custom in Japan, which is that anyone is allowed to enter your house and stay within the first few steps of the doorway (The place where you don’t have to take your shoes off) as long as the door is unlocked. What this meant was that Nisshida Mama knocked on my door as I was changing, and as I went over to shout that I was not dressed yet, she walked in to tell me we were leaving. So one of her first impressions of me turned out to be a white guy standing there in only his boxers, who in shock had forgotten all of his Japanese, and just waited for her to close the door, before getting quickly dressed and following her out. From there Nisshida Mama took us to Daiso once again to do more 100 yen shopping and then to a grocery mart to get our food. In the grocery store we met up randomly with Amanda who decided to tag along since she needed food as well. Nisshida Mama took over from here though, telling us what she wanted to eat and that we should get food based upon that. I, for instance, like mushrooms, but since Nisshida Mama is not a big fan, we did not get many mushrooms. She did show us the best curry to get, which was truly delicious, and what kind of miso to buy (which I haven’t tried yet). Unfortunately about 50% of the food that she showed us to buy I could not actually eat in time because people kept inviting us out to eat, so I never had time to cook. From there she took us to a drug store to buy some more cleaning supplies as well as shampoo and conditioner, which I desperately needed. The best part about this woman is if you tell her you need something she will always go out of her way to get it for you.
The best example of this was when Kristin and I told her that we wanted some weights to start working out with. Well as it turns out Nisshida Mama happens to be best friends with the owner of the sports store in town and she said she would take us to get a special discount. Now apparently just taking us to a sports store and back was too boring for Nisshida Mama because when we got in the car she simply turned back to us and said, “So we are going to a mountain now.” That was basically all the information I got, and it took 10 minutes of driving to figure out that the mountain in question was an hour away, and that we were going to be climbing that mountain. Of course I was prepared for this with my handy-dandy mountain climbing flip-flops, so I wasn’t worried at all. Unfortunately for me and my sandals, the weather became way too hot for us to climb, so instead we just drove to the top and walked around. It was a beautiful temple and the mountain itself was gorgeous, so again I am incredibly grateful for the experience. We explored it for about half an hour before deciding to get a snack before heading down to what I assumed would be the sports store. Now this snack was basically a combination of two of the blandest foods in Japan. The first I forget its name but it is basically three semi-transparent balls on a stick (similar to Dango, but much larger, if you know what that is) that has absolutely no taste. To make up for this they stick it in a miso broth and slowly boil it for hours to give it some flavor, but since that is still not enough they give you Japanese mustard to put on it as well, and that makes it taste good enough to eat. Another interesting fact about this food is it apparently has negative calories, meaning that you burn more calories when chewing and digesting then there are in the food.
The next food that we tried was something that we do have in America, but not in this form. I had mocchi, which in America is what the Japanese lightly cover ice cream with to make a delicious treat. Here it is just a large blob of gloopy mush. The best way I can describe it would be to melt down a marshmallow and then take out all sugar and taste, and then they cover it with miso powder or green tea powder, making it a blob of mush with flavored powder on it. To make it worse they are about the size of a fist and they are served in fours, so this is a food that is very hard to eat politely. I would complain more but a lack of a taste is always better than an awful taste, and some of the food here can be truly awful. Well after these delicious snacks we headed back to the car to go back to Shinjo, or at least that is what I thought. Instead they decided to go to Sakata, the coastal town in northern Yamagata, to get some fish for a BBQ they were throwing that night. So this was another half hour drive in the opposite direction of Shinjo, now making it a hour and a half drive back, in order to pick up fish I could not eat. Well the best part about this trip was that I got to talk to her son Taku, who I am now teaching in Nisshin Junior High School, and who also ignores me every day that I am at the school. The fish market itself was cool, since I have never really ate seafood much before Japan I have never seen anyone actually buying it in front of me, and it was interesting to see what she was purchasing and why. Well after exploring that store for a while we finally did start to head home, and the drive wasn’t too bad this last time because I knew how long we were going to be driving, and I could take a nap. That brings us to our final part of the day, at 4 o’clock we reach the sports store and head inside. Instantly she finds us a jump rope in the front of the store when we believed there weren’t any, so just within the first thirty seconds she is proving to be a better shopper than us. From there Nisshida Mama gets her friend who pulls out an exclusive catalog to order from. She finds us our dumbbells, which turned out to be a little expensive, but this was a great find and Kristin and I both placed an order for a pair. Finally we were done shopping and we could head home. The trip was planned for 10:00 am, we would leave, go 2 blocks to the sports store, and then come back to rest and nap for the rest of the day. In truth we left for the mountain at 10:00 am, got back from the sports store at 4:00 pm, just in time for me to politely decline the invite to dinner, feeling that I needed some alone time to finally relax.
There are two more events that I feel are worthy of writing down, which were our first taiko practice and then the fireworks festival. I will say at this point that for some reason I decided that I was done writing and took a 2 month break between the last sentence and this one, so if the writing style suddenly changes that is due to time and a lack of sleep from the last night. Our first taiko practice was particularly strange because we were not given drums to practice with, but instead given bamboo flutes. I have never played a wind instrument before this, so waking up early on a Saturday morning, driving to a random field, and being given a bamboo flute instead of the expected drum through me off quite a bit. Besides that our instructor spoke no English, but between his pantomiming and the both of our broken translations, we were able to understand the man. The practice lasted for 2 hours but it took us at least one hour just to get a single sound out of the flute. It was pretty funny and embarrassing to be standing in a group of 20 or 30 college students and salary men, blowing over the top of a piece of bamboo and not making a single sound. The man who was teaching us kept telling us to stretch our lips to make a long flat line, which was a facial expression I had never done and every time I tried to picture how I looked at the moment I lost all of my concentration and burst out laughing. I am proud to say that I was the first to make any sound come out, it wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t a note, but I did make the thing sound like a flute. After the first ‘note’ it got a bit easier but soon my cheeks were killing me and I had to call it quits for the day. Maybe next year I can join the festival but at the time we were only 2 weeks away and we were not going to be in Shinjo for the time anyways, so there was no point in continuing.
The fireworks festival was amazingly fun, and although I love the cool temperature and beautiful leaves of fall, I will miss the summer fireworks. I have been to many fireworks festivals in Japan, and I can easily say that Japan truly knows how to put on a firework show, nothing in America can compare to it. This firework festival was in Akita, the ken (state) right above Yamagata. Nisshida Mama came to pick us up at 5:00 right after work, giving us just enough time to change before jumping in the car with her friend, her son, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend. Hideharu (Nishida Mama’s friend) is an amazingly amusing man but also basically a functioning alcoholic. The second we got in the car he offered me a drink, and when I asked what it was he said it was something he created himself, and that I had to try. It was good, but it was strong, and through the hour and a half long car ride to Akita, I had two glasses of the stuff. The festival itself was pretty cool; it was just a stretch of land along a river that had a row of food stands that stretched about 150 feet. That was no the impressive part, to the other side of the bridge was a parking lot that was at least a quarter of a mile long and growing, and more than 2 thousand people gathering along the river to watch the show. In my opinion the best part of a Japanese festival is the food, hands down. So as soon as we parked the car Kristin and I set off on an epic food quest. It started out with Japanese cotton candy which turns out is just like American cotton candy, then we got some Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki, and crepes. I got my favorite ‘Japanese food’ which turns out to be steak on a stick, but it is delicious for a country that barely serves meat. The fireworks show itself lasted an hour, which might not sound impressive but it was an hour of straight fireworks. 99% of the fireworks shows in Japan do not play music, I used to say all but I did recently go to one show that did, but that was a competition and not a fireworks festival.
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