Happy Birthday to ME

I’ve only ever had to celebrate my birthday outside my home country three times.  All three of those times happened in Japan, and only one of them do I actually remember.  Last week I turned 24.  One of my coworkers told a few students at school that it was my birthday, and by the end of second period it seemed like the whole school knew.  So every time I stepped out into the hall or saw a student I got a “Happy Birthday!” in passing.  A lot of the students wanted to know how old I was, so I turned the situation around and gave them a chance to practice some of their own English: “How old do you think I am?” or “Guess!” were two expressions most students were fairly unfamiliar with, but they all picked up on it sooner or later.  Three different times students started singing happy birthday to me in the hall, and one group actually made it through the whole song.  The rest of the week students continued to wish me congratulations.  Keep in mind there are around 450 students at my school; it almost felt like they were waiting to ambush me with a “Happy Birthday!” by Friday. 

Another birthday surprise was a visit from my Uncle Steve.  He just happened to be in Japan on a business trip and was able to take time to stop by Funehiki for dinner one night.  It was great to get a chance to celebrate with family.  I don’t know when I’ll have another out of town visitor, but I look forward to it.  It’s always nice to see a familiar face.

I also celebrated a bit with the other Wakakusa teachers here.  They made what is probably the coolest birthday card ever for me:

Place meat here ^^, and enjoy.

Friday night they surprised me with a trip to Koriyama to have dinner at a yaki-niku restaurant called V-Brian.  We didn’t go there just because the place was obviously named after me; the food was amazing too.  The waiters placed a few mini charcoal grills on the table and then brought plate after plate of delicious raw meat.  Yaki-niku is pretty easy: grab whatever meat you want, put it on the grill until it reaches your desired doneness, and enjoy.  And it was all you can eat.  I think I ate enough meat for a month.  V-Brian – definitely not vegetarian friendly. 

I’m still getting used to life over here, but the adjustment is going well.  This place doesn’t quite feel like home yet (I don’t know if it ever will, really), but I’m getting used to the notion that I’ll be here for a while.  And if things keep going the way they’ve been going, I don’t think I’ve got much to worry about.

Streets and Squares

This past weekend I took a trip to Sendai and got a small taste of what life looks like outside rural Japan.  So forgive me if this post becomes something of a ramble, but here are a few things I noticed in comparing villages and cities in Japan.

Life in Funehiki is pretty calm.  Until a few years ago, Funehiki was its own entity, a small village among other neighboring small villages.  Funehiki still feels like a small village, but now it is technically a district of Tamura City.  Tamura was formed when Funehiki and four other villages decided to combine into one municipality.  So even though I technically live in a city of 40,000 (still a small city, but twice the size of my hometown of Ashland, OH) it still has the feeling of a small village.  There are two shopping centers within walking distance of where I live, so shopping for groceries and other general household needs is pretty easy.  Not much in the way of entertainment exists in town.  But four years of living in the middle of nowhere Western New York (aka Houghton) taught me lots of ways to find diversion when the locale is less than bustling.  They tend to roll up the sidewalks here just after sundown (which is pretty early here, compared to the states).  I’ve found one cheap diner open 24 hours, but that is definitely the exception to business in Tamura. 

I’m not that far away from diversion, if I ever feel so inclined.  The city of Koriyama is only a 30-minute train ride away, and a round trip ticket only costs about $10.  I haven’t done too much exploring in Koriyama yet, but I have made it to a couple of malls.  Book stores, coffee shops, international food stores, music shops, gyms, and even a bigger and better version of Dave and Buster’s can all be found within a 20 minute walk of the train station.  Koriyama is by no means a big city; it feels about the same size as Buffalo (my last city of residence) with a population of just over 300,000. 

That's a bowl of tail soup, fyi.

This past weekend I got my first taste of a big Japanese city: Sendai.  Lots and lots of people.  I think this was the first time I really got a chance I got to see other foreigners out and about since I’ve been here.  Meeting a stranger that doesn’t speak Japanese is rare in in Funehiki and Koriyama even, but I heard people speaking all sorts of languages in Sendai.  Sendai has just over one million residents, and the streets are wide and always full of people.  This past weekend was a holiday weekend too, so I probably experienced the city at an especially busy time.   

Moo.

 Sendai is known for its cow tongue, so I made a point to give it a try.  It was good, but still weird.  Isn’t it strange that eating other bits of a cow doesn’t give me the slightest pause, but when I start chewing a tongue I wonder why I’m not a vegetarian?  Anyway, tongue will not become part of my regular diet, but I would definitely get it again if I ever return to Sendai.  

One of the few places you can't be on a bike in Sendai.

Another difference in the big city was bikes.  In Tamura and Koriyama, bikes are not too common.  Sure, there are designated bike parking areas at the grocery stores, but they are always pretty empty, at least when I’m there.  This was not the case in Sendai.  Bikes are everywhere, which is a little strange because the streets are not bike friendly in the least.  In fact, bikes aren’t even allowed on the big streets and have to be ridden on sidewalks, which make for pretty slow biking because of the crowds of pedestrians.  But still you see bikes parked everywhere, and even small underground parking areas with special ramps for bikes.  But wherever you see a bike parked, there is usually no more security on it than a simple wheel lock.  This brings me to a similarity between cities and villages in Japan, and one of the biggest differences between Japan and the States.  Japan is very very safe.  I was told this before I got here, but wow.  It took two nights in Buffalo before we learned the hard way that you need a super heavy-duty lock if you are going to keep your bike on the porch overnight.  I wouldn’t ever leave my bike alone without securing it to something sturdy with a big U-lock.  But now I live in a town of 40,000 with a security force comprising of four unarmed police officers.  Of course, the police forces in Koriyama and Sendai are a little bigger than that, but the cities still feel just as safe. 

I look forward to getting to travel throughout Japan and get a better sense of the differences between rural and urban life here, but I still have plenty to learn about life in little Funehiki yet.  It will be interesting to look back after I’ve been here a while and see if my initial impressions were at all accurate to how things really work.

Hajimemashite

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that any of this is real.  But I tell myself that it is, that I’ve been in Japan for a week, and that I’m not just here on a vacation.  It’ll sink in soon enough.  

After breakfast last Tuesday we made the four-hour drive from Narita to Funehiki.  Upon arrival I was greeted by a crowd of teachers from the kindergarten, a few of my fellow American English teachers, and some others.  After a brief introduction everyone returned to work and I went out to lunch to start meeting some of the other team members.  But before we left Kawai sensei handed me a paper to write down my name, home town, and a few of my interests/hobbies.  I briefly wrote down that I was from Ashland, OH and that I liked saxophone, biking, and snowboarding.  Little did I know, this paper was to be typed up in Japanese and handed out to every person that I would meet for the rest of the week.  

We went to lunch at a restaurant called Gusto, sort of a Japanese attempt at Denny’s.  The rest of the afternoon was spent at my apartment, moving in, getting to know some of the guys on the team.  That evening was team dinner, Japanese curry, where I got to meet the other team members that I had missed earlier in the day.   Honestly much of these first few days is already a blur because of the jet lag, so I won’t be able to give much more description than this.

Wednesday morning I got all dressed up in my new suit jacket and met the Board of Education.  I met Encho sensei on the drive over there.  He’s the guy running the show over here, the reason I was able to come over at all.  (To my friends in Buffalo, imagine him as a sort of Chuck Massey figure, except a little older.)  While in the car I told him how I had been in Japan as a baby, a story which he has already repeated many times as he introduced me to various people in town.  Most of the meeting with the Board of Education consisted of me sitting and smiling as everyone spoke around me in Japanese.  (My time in Japan has already given me a new appreciation for the refugees I worked with in Buffalo and the difficulties they face in trying to learn a new language and culture.)  Someone brought out some cold tea for us to drink.  It was made from roasted barley and tasted delicious.  I understand that it is a summer specialty around here.  I’ll definitely be getting some to have at home.  The board members had a couple of questions for me, which were thankfully translated into English.  One of them asked me how much Japanese I knew, and I responded that I mostly knew kid’s songs from when I was here as a child, which of course prompted a request for a performance.  So I rattled off the first few lines of “Zo-o-san, Zo-o-san” much to the general approval of the audience.  We said our goodbyes, and then it was off to Funehiki Jr. High (Fune-Chu) to meet with the principal before lunch.  Unfortunately the Principal was out of the office, but I was able to meet the Vice Principal.  It was similar to the meeting with the Board of Education, down to another cup of cold barley tea.  I sat and listened to their Japanese as the Vice Principal read my introduction sheet, learning that I like saxophone, biking, and snowboarding.  Lunch that day was out at a different restaurant where we had cold soba and tempura.  And the soba was freshly made.  The rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur, that’s when the fog from jet lag starts to set in.  It involved some shopping, a trip to the bank to get money changed, etc.  We did make a special stop at a shop to get some daifuku.  Ever had those bean filled mochi-type balls you can get at Asian markets in the states?  It was like that, except they were filled with cream and fruit and all sorts of other goodies, and they were fresh.  Changed my life.

Thursday was my last big introduction before starting work: the mayor.  Seems like a really great mayor; he was happy to have me in the city.  The intro went pretty similar to my other introductions, except we got a picture and he gave me some of the special water they bottle out of one of the nearby caves. 

Me shaking hands with the mayor.

That afternoon some of the guys on the team took me out to the gorge, a little swimming whole just outside town frequented by us Americans, and no one else, it seems like.  They had just set up a rope swing, and we spent a couple hours swinging and swimming and dodging horseflies (rather unsuccessfully).  I’m sure I’ll be spending a lot more time out there as long as weather permits swimming.  

Friday was a pretty relaxed day with nothing official scheduled for me to do.  A few team members showed me around town, and we went to lunch at the new conveyor belt sushi place in town.  I don’t know when I will cease to be amazed at the food over here, but it will probably be a while.  Let me describe this place.  So there is a constant stream of different sushi plates making their way by the table on a lower conveyor belt.  If you see one that looks appetizing, you just grab it off the line.  If you want anything in particular there is a touch screen to place your order.  When your food is ready, it comes on a little train that runs above the main conveyor.  You take your food off the train, push the button, and send the train back to the kitchen.  When you are ready to go, you tap a button on the screen, and a waitress comes by to count up your plates.  It’s pretty simple: each plate is 100 yen, so however many you grabbed from the line and have sitting next to you empty dictates your bill.  I’ll be back there again soon.

The fast food of Japan.

Koriyama is the closest big city to Tamura.  They’ve got a couple of shopping centers, Starbucks, and an international food store.  So Saturday Celeste and Hope showed me how to use the train and gave me a brief tour of the high points of the city.  We went up a sky scraper called the Big-I next to the train station where we could see the mountain that is right next to Funehiki, so that was neat.  At the sporting goods store I found a bike I will probably buy, but I didn’t have the cash on hand to do it then.  I really really miss my old bike; I hope it is enjoying its new life without me.  On the train ride home Celeste offered her seat to and elderly lady who graciously accepted it.  The lady spoke excellent English, and we talked with her all the way back to Funehiki about her travels around the world, how Japanese schools have declined in the past few years, and the recent Buddhist festival.  Celeste said it was really surprising to run into anyone that spoke that level of English, especially someone that old.  There was one funny miscommunication, though.  She was asking where I lived, and I said just down the street from Celeste.  But she misunderstood, and responded, “Oh, you’re like me, homeless.”  I guess she thought I lived on the street, not down the street.  I will probably never see her again, but I am glad I was able to give her some company on the train and a chance to practice some English. 

Today was my first chance to go to Funehiki Evangelical Church.  I think I counted 10 Japanese in attendance, which meant that all the English teachers present nearly doubled the congregation.  At the end of the service they surprised me with a request to say a few words about myself in front of the group, but I’m starting to get used to being asked to do these sort of things last minute, so it wasn’t so bad.  School starts tomorrow, and it will be a day full of more introductions and who knows what else.  Fingers crossed.