Fire Festival + first day of school+ computer crash

Time to catch everyone up to speed on the last 5 days or so!

This weekend was the Fujiyoshida fire festival. They claim it’s one of the three biggest festivals in Japan, but you here that for just about everything here. It was a big day for us because a lot of our JET friends were going to make the rare trip down to Fujiyoshida to see the town and the fire festival, so for once it wouldn’t be just Phil and me hanging around by ourselves.

Here’s a brief rundown on the fire festival. About an hour before sunset a group of drunks take the portable shrines from the Sengen Jinja temple down into the main part of town. The shrines are very heavy, so it’s really quite a task when you combine it with the drunkenness. They also stop to take many beer breaks on the way down. This gives everyone a good chance to take their picture on front of the shrines (one’s a big fancy gold one, the other is a strange looking orange Mt. Fuji number). Once the drunken procession makes it all the way down then it’s time to start the real festivities!

Fujiyoshida has on large main road called Hancho Dori that runs from the main part of town up to the Sengen Jinja. This street is closed off to traffic for the fire festival and street vendors set up booths where they have little games for the kids and they sell a large selection of festival foods (I had okonamiyaki which is essentially a kind of Japanese omlet). Once the shrines are in place and the sun has gone down, several bonfires and pyres are lit in the middle of Hancho Dori. They really don’t seem that impressive by themselves, the coolness comes when you look down the street and all you can see is a line of fire that goes for miles. They are also a real safety hazard as there is nothing separating the people from the fire. The bonfires and pyres also tend to collapse as they burn. I personally don’t feel that it’s really a fire festival until somebody is seriously injured.

Anyways, we all just walked up and down Hancho Dori while getting stuffed on festival and drunk off of overpriced beer. After the festival was over, we all headed back to our apartment complex and had a little after-party until our guests fell asleep on our floor (thankfully there was no puking). The next day a couple of them stayed and we have them the big tour of the town, including going to our favorite sushi place.

That was Phil and mine’s last week without having to work. School started on Monday of this week. The first day was only a half day for the kids. It basically consisted of an assembly, uniform checks and the students getting yelled at by a former sumo wrestler (I’ll explain later). I was the guest of honor at the assembly so I had to make a speech introducing myself to the school. Since I’m not really into public speaking and I assumed that 99% of what I said would not be understood by anybody I decided to just give a brief (I’m happy to be here, Japan is different, nice to meet you, etc) speech that only lasted about one minute. I just went up on the stage, spit it our real quick and sat back down.

My speech caused quite the ado among the faculty. It wasn’t that I said anything wrong, in fact, nobody but the English teachers had any idea what I said. Rather, the faculty was very upset that a few of the students were goofing off during my short speech and not paying attention. The caused the students to endure not one but two yelling sessions administered by the PE teacher who used to be a sumo wrestler. First he yelled at the entire school for about 15 minutes. Afterwards he separated out a group of about 30-40 kids and just yelled at them for about 20 minutes. I talked to a few of the trouble making kids right after the shouting lesson. I have no idea what they said, but I was assuming that they kept asking for my penis size or something similar because they kept laughing as they asked.

As I was writing this blog entry at school my computer crashed. It turned out that some of my memory broke so I went two days without a computer (it was awful, I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive!) Anyways now I don’t feel like finishing this entry, so too bad. Well, maybe I will, later…

Sengen Jinja

Go Ventforet!

Last night a group of us headed down to the sports facility in Kofu to watch a Japanese professional soccer match. My supervisor volunteers for the game and got us some free tickets. That would have been awesome enough right there, but then she brought everybody some sandwiches, chips, beer and sake. When was the last time your boss did that for you?!

Anyways, the big team here in Yamanashi is Ventforet Kofu. Nobody is quite sure how to pronounce the word, especially not the Japanese (they have trouble with v's and words ending with t, show the name just comes out as a garbled beeenfooe). Everybody in Kofu is really excited because this is the first year Ventforet became J1, which is essentially the Japanese professional level. I'm not sure how long Ventforet was wasting away down in J2, but now it's their turn to shine!

...Unfortunately Ventforet is apparently not a very good team. They have one of the worse records and are in danger of being demoted back to J2. They were heavy underdogs to win the game last night against and much better team from somewhere in Japan (I'll never know). Nonetheless, a packed crowd (including 5 foreigners) attended the game in high spirits. My spirits steadily increased throughout the night as I went through the carton of sake the supervisor had generously provided.

The game started off slow. There were no goals in the first period and maybe only one or two scoring chances. Ventforet was looking sloppy with a lot of turnovers and bad passes (I know this is basketball terminology, but I don't watch soccer so to hell with you!). Through the came the Japanese fans cheered in unison, often chanting very catch and well rehearsed fight songs. The came picked up in the second half when Ventforet's star player (some foreigner they call Bare) scored off a corner kick. Things were looking good for Ventforet until there was about 1 minute left in the game. A bad pass took a high bounce and went over the goalie's head for a fluke goal. This seemed to kill the spirits of the Japanese crowd as now the game would have to be decided in 3 minutes of stoppage time. I'm not sure how overtime rules work in Japanese league, but fortunately no extra time was needed. With about 30 seconds left in stoppage time a Ventforet player intercepted and pass which lead to the game winning goal. The crowd cheered, the players celebrated and I was drunk.

I passed out in the car ride home. The carton of sake was surprisingly easy to drink which probably was my downfall for the night. Thankfully I didn't have to be at work until 10:00 today. I hope they didn't notice that I was feeling hungover...

Ode to Udon

Well, I've begun to have my first really bad food cravings here in Japan. You tell yourself "hey, I can live for a year without pizza!" but you're wrong, you're dead wrong. I would probably cut off my limb for any of the following: A real pizza (one without shrimp, mayonnaise, squid, etc), buffalo wings or any combination of frank's red hot and chicken, a big of spicy nacho/salsa verde/cool ranch dorritos, peanut butter (it's rare here and costs a ton), a submarine sandwich, a 12 pack of pepsi (coke is the soda of choice here) and above all else a 12 pack of good Colorado microbrew beer. Japanese beer is all pretty much the same with slight variations between the brands. To try and get myself over the hump, I've decided that I'd write some positive things about Japanese cuisine.

1. Kaiten zushi! This is a kind of sushi plate that sends plates of sushi around on a conveyer belt around the restaurant. You collect all your plates which are color coded according to price. The one that Phil and I go to has plates of either 100 yen, 150 yen or 250 yen. Although all the good stuff is 250 yen (and thus still relatively expensive), you can still get a decent sushi meal for about 1000 yen or about $9. Each plate also comes with two pieces of sushi which curtails the price a bit.

2. It's healthy! The extra pounds are just melting off of me here in Fujiyoshida (although I think I gained them all back at the enkai). My clothes are beginning to fit a little looser and I have the world's healthiest cuisine to thank. Lean meats, noodles, rice and vegetables make up just about every meal that I eat here. You can have a quality, healthy rice and fish meal here for incredibly cheap as well. Hopefully I'll be a lean mean blogging machine by the time I'm done in Japan.

3. Ramen, Udon, Yakitori, etc! You can eat out fairly inexpensively in Japan if you go out for any of these foods. A huge bowl of Ramen or udon will only cost about 400 yen (about $3.50) and is much tastier and filling than anything you can get at McDonald's or similar fast food places. The downside is that I don't have much motivation to actually cook with so many of these places around.

4. Regional delicacies! It seems like every town, city and prefecture claims that it's famous for something. In Fujiyoshida udon is king. They're so proud of their udon that they ask every tourist or foreigner what they think of Yoshida udon. The funny thing is that I do actually think it tastes better than the udon I've had other places. They claim that it's the Mt. Fuji water; I think it's just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Either way, I have a plethora of options for high quality, cheap udon here in Fujiyoshida. Other things Yamanashi is famous for include: Hotou (a hot pumpkin stew), Yamanashi grapes and Yamanashi peaches (see photo blog).

5. Last but not least: The beer vending machine! Beer is everywhere in Japan. Most convenience stores have a large beer section where you can buy a large (but poor quality) can of beer of about 200 yen, sometimes less. You can also walk about with an open beer without breaking the law, but I've yet to see any non-foreigner do it. They also have the best invention known to man: the beer vending machine. I have one right outside of my apartment. At any time of day or night I can go and shell out 200 yen for a beer. They're also great to do some pre-drinking because the bars here charge about 500-600 yen for a pint of beer. Unfortunately, this invention makes underage drinking incredibly easy and it will never find its way to the US. Quite a shame really.

Well, I feel better now. Now it's time to chow down on my breakfast riceball from 7-11. I just hope that this one isn't filled with fish eggs....

My first enkai (work drinking party)

I finally got settled back in here at Fujiyoshida on Sunday night after being away for a huge lake party over the weekend (and the aforementioned SETY which shall never be talked about again). I had no time to relax on Sunday night however as I had to participate in a big presentation designed to promote English education in elementary schools. Thankfully the two JET veterans took care everything and all Phil and I had to do was get dressed up in suits and nod our heads.

After the presentation and the subsequent meetings (all the teachers said they wanted us to visit elementary schools more) we had some down time. The four of us went had udon for lunch (I only have udon about 4 times a week) and then Phil and I chilled around in Gekko-ji for a couple of hours and finally got our treasured gaijin cards. After a brief and pointless meetings at the BoE it was time to prepare for our welcome enkai!

Here's how the enkai works: A group of people from the office get together at various times for various reasons for the enkai. Last night's occasion was to officially welcome Phil and me to Fujiyoshida (which makes me wonder if I've been officially unwelcome the past three weeks). This party was actually mandatory for most people there (including Phil and I). Basically everyone at the enkai stuffs themselves with high class Japanese food, gets drunk on any sort of alcoholic drink and makes fools out of themselves. Everybody also forks over a small fortune at the end of the night.

Every enkai (or anything in Japan really) also begins with a speech and a toast. About three speeches were given where I had no idea what they said. It was then Phil and I's turn to do a toast. I gave what I felt was a very kind, heartfelt speech. None of the Japanese people understood it and nobody translated it for them, so I ended up just feeling idiotic. Phil also gave an untranslated little spchiel and then it was time for the kanpai (the Japanese version of saying cheers).

The enkai was at this fancy new restaurant that served fancy Japanese food. I'm pretty sure we ordered everything on the menu that night and boy did I get stuffed. My favorite food was rice baked in leaves that we had for desert. The pot roast was really good too. Frankly I liked everything. I was too drunk to have any knowledge about details after that except that my Japanese seemed to magically improve. I also impressed a few Japanese people with my drinking ability. They wouldn't let Phil and I pay at the end so I really have no idea how much they spent. My guess is that each of them had to have pushed about $70 at least. I had a really fun time and it was great to see the people at the office lighten up for a bit. I don't know when the next enkai is but I have a feeling that I'll have one soon once school begins. Whenever it is, I can guarantee that my liver will be ready to go!

Japan(?)

Ok, so I've had the internet for a little over a week but I have still been slacking off with the blogs? Why you ask? Well, I'll tell you!

There have been two things sucking up all my time for about the last week and a half: Yamanashi orientation and SETY. Each of these events lasted for multiple days and both were held everyday in Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi prefecture.

Kofu is about an hour and a half drive away from Fujiyoshida if the traffic is light. It takes even longer if you go by train or bus (thankfully we had rides to and from Kofu every night). These conferences all start at 8:00 in the morning and go to 4:30. That means I had to wake up extremely early and I would always get home late. I spent the few hours of free time I had just eating and hanging out (I just got in to watching the office, that show is great). I just haven't had the energy to sit down and do any lengthy writing (it was even a pain to write this one, I just got back from a huge 2-day camping party and in about an hour I have to plan for a big elementary school meetings tomorrow morning).

There also hasn't really been anything to report, especially not about Japan. I've spent a copious amounts of time hanging out with groups of foreigners rather than the first week in Yamanashi when I was left out in the middle of nowhere to my own devices. Lately I've felt that I'm in a part of America with a high population of Japanese people rather than being in Japan itself. There's a group of second and third year people that seem to want it this way called YETI. Basically they just plan things that all the foreign people in the area can get together and do to make Japan feel as American (or British/Canadian) as they can. They even plan all the big drinking parties at foreigner bars throughout Tokyo. While they're mostly nice people, I can't help but think that they lost sight of why they came to Japan in the first place. Thankfully I'm finished with all these stupid conferences in Kofu and I can get back to settling in here in Fujiyoshida. I have a couple of scattered meetings this week but for the most part I have a lot of time off until school starts next Monday.

Hopefully I'll have some better stories to tell soon. I had a lot of things in my head to write about for the first couple of weeks but I didn't get the chance to jot them down. Maybe they'll come back to me.

The blight called the conference

Now that I've entered the "real world" and I have a "job" I've already grown to hate one thing: the confererence.

So far I've gone to mandatory conferences for just about everything, all of them useless. We even had to sit through a conference on food during one of our lunch breaks. Some of these aren't so bad. The conferences in Tokyo came with free food and a stay at a 5-star hotel. This week, however, sucks. We've had an English teacher's conference all this week in Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi about an hour an a half away. For this particular conference we are not provided lodging. While Kofu is relatively short, it's not fun to commute for 3 hours a day to have 8 hours worth of pointless meetings, especially since we have to be there at 8:30 everyday. This may also be the most pointless conference yet: 4 days of activities with the sole purpose of getting English teachers to speak English.

Well, I had just enough time to squeeze out a short, bitter blog. Maybe I can write something better this weekend(?).

On suddenly being a local celebrity

Probably the biggest adjustment I've had to make so far here in Fujiyoshida is suddenly not being able to blend in. Sticking out in a foreign country, especially one as homogeneous as Japan, is something you think you're prepared for before you come but still ends up hitting you like a ton of bricks. Suddenly everybody here recognizes me. Even if somebody doesn't specifically knows me per se, he probably knows that I'm a new English teacher or at the very least that I'm not Japanese. I was nothing more than a face in the crowd no more than two weeks ago and suddenly I'm dressing up in suits to visit government officials who thank me for coming to their town. People all over town have randomly come up to me and started talking to me just for the opportunity. Kids especially like to run up to me and practice their English. Everyone in town is shocked that I know how to use chopsticks.


I haven't quite decided if I like it or not. There's been some good parts and bad parts regarding my celebrity status so far:

The good:
-I keep getting free stuff our the ass. Just last night I got free desert for no discernible reason other than being a tall, blonde foreigner. I almost always get some sort of free food, a discount or something similar just about everytime I go for food.
-There's some real fun involved when people are shocked to see somebody like me come into their store. Our second night in Fujiyoshida we went into a small yakitori shop that I'm pretty sure had never had foreigners in it. It's always an adventure to eat with a shocked old Japanese man who doesn't speak a word of English.
-Being the center of attention is a huge change for me. I would generally try to avoid it, but here I have no choice so I just go with it. Everybody wants to talk to me suddenly and I've already made a few Japanese friends. One of them is a sushi chef who is studying to become an actor. We've been to his restaurant twice. When we went to his place the second time we felt like we were Norm in the Japanese version of Cheers. We're trying to get him to go to this big lake party on Saturday.

The bad:
-There are times when I feel like a sideshow freak. My second or third day here I nearly caused a traffic jam just by walking down the side of the road. People also get a kick out of the fact that I'm too big for just about everything here and have no qualms about laughing at me whenever I hit my head or can't fit at the low table for dinner.
-I have very little privacy/peace and quiet when I'm out of my apartment. My supervisor always eerily seems to know what I was doing and where I've been the night before. It would also be nice just to be able to go to the store and not have little girls stare at me and have people whisper about me
-Japanese people seem to think it's fun to make fun of me just because they assume they can't understand them. While I the train this guy a few seats down from me kept saying "gaijin-san...HAHAHAHAHA". In general I also just have people point and me and giggle (both children and adults). I'm almost surprised when a Japanese person treats me like a normal human.

Well, that's it for now. I'll try and write a big ol' blog that says what I've been up to sometime in the near future.

Holy crap! I'm in Japan!

I finally got internet setup in my apartment so I can start blogging again, but right now I'm too tired to write anything substantial. I have a ton of stories to tell already and I'll be putting up a ton of pictures on my photo blog very soon!