Day 02 – Describe your neighborhood in Japan.

The mountains to the north of us.

The Ocean to our south.

Welcome to Aki-shi! Aki is a small city an hour east of Kochi City (biggest city in the prefecture) and has about 20,000 people living in it. It sits right against the ocean, in front of the mountains, and has 6 stops on the Gomen-Nahari train line. Aki is made up of a number of different sub-villages that decided to combine to be one large city within the last 10 years. All of the schools in Aki are named after the area that they reside in but there's about 15-20 sub-villages within the city limits. (Everything on the English wikipedia was written by me on a boring day at work, so I am the self proclaimed internet-expert of this city, heh~)

Yosakoi festival in Aki

Hanshin tiger's game

Aki is well known for producing eggplant, being the birthplace of Iwasaki Yatarou (the founder of The Mitsubishi Company), having the Hanshin Tiger's training camp, and making a dish called "chirimendon" which is rice covered in green onions, thinned soy sauce, and the tiny tiny dried fish with forever-glaring eyes.

This is Yatarou. :D

I live right by the main train station, behind the fire station, and within spitting distance of four different clinics (foot, general, eye, teeth) and a really delicious bakery. Yum~

View from my front door, 2nd floor.

There is also a really cool cave in the sub-village Ioki. It honestly looks like you've just stepped into Jurassic Park or something. You can't hear the noises of the highway anymore and it's just gorgeous and green.

Among the many different festivals that happen in Aki, my favorites are the Annual Yosakoi festival and candle festival. Yosakoi is Kochi Prefecture's famous dance-festival that happens for a week every year in the city. The Aki-version happens a week prior to the bigger festival on a Sunday where they set up the usual festival booths and have teams dance in this large "city square" area. The candle festival is a night festival set up in order to celebrate Iwasaki Yatarou's birthday. People parade into the area in front of the station with candles, hand-made candles sit all around the parking lot, musical groups perform, and all the local restaurants have food booths, selling things like cheese cake and hot wine. It's near Christmas time, so a lot of the surrounding houses have "illuminations" set up, and a few of the trains are decked out in snowflake lights as well. And that is Aki-shi! Although it's a little too country-side for my taste.. it has its fun things, its beautiful things, and of course, some of my best friends :)

Handmade candles and illuminations in the background.

Majority of Aki is just rice....

We have two sake companies in the city. One of them is De-'s company (this is one of their products, shaped like Ryoma).

Two gorgeous rivers run through the city too. The Ioki River and the Aki River.

Day 01 – A picture of you “in Japan”. (doing or wearing something “Japanese”)

I chose this picture because it was the first time since coming to Japan (this time around) that I actually felt like I should be here. I felt like I fit in, that I had some really AWESOME friends right in town with me, and felt like Aki-shi was home rather than a cage. While I know my future lies elsewhere, in a bigger city somewhere in the world... because of these friends and good memories, Aki-shi will always hold a special place in my heart.

Also, what's more Japanese (or Kochi-esque) than spending five hours at an izakaya drinking, eating, and laughing with fun people? Nothing, I think. :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of friends, I went on a pseudo-date yesterday with the goofy one in the above picture (with the blue towel). I say pseudo-date, because it definitely had the makings/shell of a date, while not feeling terribly date-ish/being called a date etc. He picked me up at 6:30 and we drove to the city, ate kaitensushi (which he paid for) then drove up to the top of this mountain called "Godaisan" and looked out at the city and lights from the look-out point. It was a gorgeous night, though cloudy, and the temperature was perfect. We chatted the whole night about random shit, and there was no awkward pauses, silences, or anything weird. It was really pleasant. :) Whether he thinks it was a date or not is unknown to me, but it was a fun night with a friend and I got a free dinner out of it (score!).

Japan 30 Day Meme

I haven't had a ton of inspiration to post anything recently, so I decided in order to start the creative juices flowing again, I was going to steal the idea of doing this 30-Day Meme over the next 30 blog posts (not one-a-day sort of thing) from Caroline Josephine's blog! :) Here are the themes I will be attempting to write about:


Day 01 – A picture of you “in Japan”. (doing or wearing something “Japanese”)
Day 02 – Describe your neighborhood in Japan.
Day 03 – Most interesting person you met.
Day 04 – What’s your favorite place that’s not in any of the guidebooks/lists of places to visit?
Day 05 – Which, if any, Japanese mannerisms or expressions have you adopted?
Day 06 – Food that you swore you would never eat but now love (or tolerate).
Day 07 – Which Japanese words do you use in English? (hanami, shinkansen, etc.)
Day 08 – Share a funny anecdote about living/working in Japan.
Day 09 – Favorite stores/shopping centers.
Day 10 – Something about Japan that sets it apart from anywhere else.
Day 11 – What did you find most overrated and underrated about Japan?
Day 12 – Describe a fail!gaijin moment. (Where you did something wrong or completely misunderstood because you couldn’t ~read the air~ or just plain had no idea what you were supposed to do because you weren’t born and raised here) Describe a gaijin!smash moment .(Where your foreignness was to your benefit)
Day 13 – Something about Japan that reminds you of home?
Day 14 – What is the hardest thing about living in Japan versus your home country?
Day 15 – Weirdest food item you’ve seen, and weirdest food item you’ve actually eaten.
Day 16 – How you realised you’d acclimated to Japan. (if you have)
Day 17 – Your karaoke top 5, your sushi top 5, your conbini top 5.
Day 18 – Post some amusing/cute/faily purikura.
Day 19 – Your favorite Japanese character(s) and Gachapon/UFO Catcher toys
Day 20 – Favorite Japanese festival or folklore.
Day 21 – Favorite and least favorite Japanese fashion trends.
Day 22 – Your favorite Japanese saying or kotowaza (proverb).
Day 23 – What is something you have/do in Japan that you wish you had/could do in your home country?
Day 24 – Your favorite Japanese slang or borrow-word (外来語), e.g. セフレ “sex friend”
Day 25 – Most interesting vending machine find.
Day 26 – What’s your favorite/least favorite train line.
Day 27 – Place you avoid going to if at all possible.
Day 28 – A picture of you looking like a weaboo/A picture of you trying to blend in and failing.
Day 29 – What’s the thing you [will] miss most about Japan when you leave (either on vacation, or move away)?
Day 30 – Did Japan meet your expectations, both good and bad? What has been the most surprising thing about Japan for you, or the thing you least expected?

タイムスリッピ

I feel like a time slip has happened since I got back to Japan TWO WEEKS AGO. These two weeks have passed by really quickly... but in a good way!

Seeing my friends and family was amazing and sad all at the same time. I had to schedule myself very carefully, and I ended up not being able to see everyone as much as I wanted to... I also had to go through box upon box of junk I'd left my parents before I moved here. Clothes, weird toys and tons of school supplies that, after a year, I finally figured out I didn't need/really wanted. I ended up bringing back tons of shoes and clothes for the next year here in Kochi, and donating a TON of stuff to good will. I felt a lot better going through all those boxes and being able to get rid of stuff. It felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest because I was lightening a burden I had shoved on my parents (taking care of all that junk).

My one regret is not getting my hands on the baby grand piano that sits in my parent's living room. I've been aching to play the piano for the past year and I just.... didn't have time, between seeing people, cleaning things, and trying to spend as much time with my parents as possible (if it was up to them, I wouldn't have seen ANY of my friends.. :| but that's parents for you...).

Other than the usual work work work, me and Matto got to go to Tokushima last weekend to have our VERY FIRST PRACTICE with our new band! (not yet named) Atsushi, the drummer and singer from my FAVORITE band in Japan is drumming (I was soooo nervous playing/singing along side my not-so-famous idol crush) and Arase from HAMK is lead guitar. I'm doing vocals and guitar and Matto is doing Bass. In the three hours we practiced, we got through two songs. After, they invited us to dinner and it was really really fun~ :) These guys are soooo much more reliable, nice, and opinionated than our former bandmates. I'm sooo stoked for our next practices!!

Three day weekend ahoy! Not a busy weekend, but I do get to go to Matsuyama for some shopping and girl time~

On the way home...

Yup! Waiting at the gate for my flight back home! Not looking forward to 11.5 hours in the air, and I know this will go quickly, but I'm excited for the vacation!!

America, here I come!!

From my iphone

I remember checking to see if blogger had an iPhone app awhile ago, so either I got it terribly wrong or this is an awesome new feature :)

My junior high school kids are practicing for their undoukai today. I had my last two English classes before going to the US so I'm happy to just watch them suffer today, hahaha~ t-minus one day until my flight leaves from narita airport!!!

This is called the "seisui ippiki" which means they are ALL tied together by the legs and need to run as a unit and not fall.

So much to do....

They made me wear the pink pin suit!

On the third I had a chill birthday party in the city with some friends. We all went bowling at Round One and then went to Hirome for drinks and then a few of us went back to my house to play Wii and have a good old-fashioned sleepover! :)

This last weekend was probably the best weekend I've had in a long time. Friday night, I had a party at my house that I had been planning for awhile. A bunch of my Japanese friends were able to come and I got some of the nicest gifts~ Mall gave me Turncoat's new CD (which is an amazing recording) as well as two new records which are really good; De- brought me the sparkling sake I've been really wanting to get a hold of as well as her customary birthday Aomori melon; and Nat-chan and crew started the cutest photo album for me based off the adventure book from the movie UP.

Saturday, I went to see Pall Mall play at a live house called Bay-B. I guess it's called that because it's a smaller live space within the Bay-5 Square building (which houses more big-name concerts and such). The show was great (Pall Mall, In The Unknown, Bacho, Lovers, Keep Away From Children, and EYE). Between sets, Dorami told me that they were playing in Matsuyama on Sunday with Thirsty Chords, Turncoat, Circle Flex, three of the bands from that day and a few others and she offered to let me carpool with them~

Sunday, we took the highway to Matsuyama. The awesome part of coming with the band (if you're not playing) was that I didn't have to pay the full ticket price and only had to contribute 500 yen for the drink ticket. The show was great, but the best part of it was talking to the drummer from Thirsty Chords. I've told him before I like his voice (he's also the main vocals for Thirsty Chords), but hadn't had a chance to actually chat with him until Sunday night. He told me it was too bad my other band wasn't still playing because he wanted to do a show with us. I said that I really really wanted to keep going with it, but there are so few drummers in Kochi that it was most likely impossible we'd ever perform again. After a few more minutes of talking about it he said, "Okay. Let's play in a band together. Tokushima and Kochi are far apart but I think I could make it down to Kochi twice a month to practice."

?!?!??!??!?!!?!!!

I'm trying not to get too excited right now, because Japan has stomped on my hopes and dreams many a time before, so this could just be a dead end.... but the mere thought of having my absolutely favorite Japanese Band's drummer/vocalist be a drummer/vocalist in my band..... I could die.

Mid-Week Food Spam!

Other than thinking of how excited I am about going home for a visit in 2.5 weeks, I've been reading a health book and trying out lots of good, healthy, recipes! It's been fun (albeit expensive to be buying so many more veggies than I was before), and I think it's totally worth the extra effort some of these take. Most of them don't take any more time than my usual lazy food, and they are so much more delicious!! That, and making the salmon one yesterday opened my eyes to the fact that my oven/microwave has a "grill" function which I assume is the same as broiling.

Ham, cheese, and chive omelet with tea and vegetable juice for breakfast.

Nabe lunch. I got the idea from the morning show I watch, "Mocco's Kitchen." Has eggplant, orange pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes, onion, garlic, wakame and chicken broth in it. Nabe-ed over a flame for 10 min and seasoned~

Broiled salmon with fried onions, garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes and spinach. Love salmon <3

Yesterday, I cut squares out for the quilt I'm planning on making. Thus far, I have 30 squares each of 3 types of fabric. I need one more color and then I can start stitching it and putting on the back, etc. I'm excited to finally have a quilt again! I left this adorable one my friend made for me in High School back in the US. It had a huge strawberry on it and said いちご in hiragana underneath. I don't wanna do anything that fancy, but I'm excited anyway. Other than that, I went over to Nat-chan's house round 7:30 and watched Burlesque with her. Great movie! I liked that a lot better than Chicago and actually, I don't usually like musical movies but this one made it much more natural (not too hard with the premise). おすすめ！

Please Don't Stop the Music~

Busy weekend! Friday night was a "group birthday party" on the west side. Including me, there were 6 other birthday people (August and early September birthdays) celebrating. We all piled into someones house, BBQ'd and chatted. Saturday, we caravan-ed out to Shimanto for fireworks (some honestly AMAZING fireworks), drinking and a clubbing event that was packed full of people! Good 3AM night and an amazing breakfast the next day. :) Some how a house of 13 people didn't feel that full the next morning as we all lazed around sipping juice and eating an amazing egg scramble on english muffins. Most other people stayed in Shimanto for a beer float but the four of us who came together decided to hit an onsen and then get back early. I also stopped at Hard Off on the way and got myself a birthday present~ (new film camera, only 6000 yen!!). Tiring but fun weekend to end August with. Here we come, school year!

Lemony Goodness

This week's baked good is brought to you by the blog, "Xai Eats A Lot." I have never made lemon bars before (or for that matter, ANYTHING that involves that many lemons and zest) and it was really easy! My oven, being a Japanese oven, bakes a little unevenly so one side of the bars were a bit firmer, and the other side were more gooey.... but I don't think that hurt them in any way (the gooey side was FANTASTIC) and I will know better next time! I think that the recipe for the lemony topping is fantastic and a nice blend of tart and sweet~ Can't wait to show these things off tonight at the combo birthday party I'm going to (5 or so people's b-days being combined into one party kinda thing)! Here is the recipe:

Lemon Bars

(shortbread crust)
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 tsp salt (omit if using salted butter)

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. cream butter, sugar and salt until fluffy.
3. when it get’s paler that the butter’s original color, add flour and mix just until  it’s combined.
4. press the dough in a 9 x 13 inch parchment-lined or buttered and floured baking pan. make sure you cover the whole baking dish with the dough. bake for 15 to 20 minutes until lightly browned. let it cool and set aside. do not turn off the oven, you’ll be returning that pan back into it with the lemon filling.

(lemon topping)
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 tbsp lemon zest
3 tbsp flour

1. whisk sugar and eggs until pale and thick.
2. stir in lemon juice and zest, and add flour until combined.
3. pour this mixture over the cooled shortbread crust. bake for another 15 to 20 minutes or until the lemon filling is set.
4. let it cool and cut in squares. just a note when cutting, make sure you wipe the knife clean with a damp towel everytime you slice the bars so that you’ll have clean cuts.

Looking forward to a busy weekend! Tonight is the combo birthday party in Sakawa, tomorrow will be fireworks and a dance party in Nakamura, and Sunday there is a possible beer float (depending on how I feel/weather) to attend on the Shimanto river. Nice way to spend the last weekend before school starts, I must say. :)

Live it up~

Phew... This weekend felt a lot longer than two days!

Friday, a few of us went over to E's for drinks and food. We all made and brought over some food and De- brought over some new sake that her company just started selling last week (I think it's one of my new favorites). E's friend from Okinawa was visiting Kochi so it was fun to chat with him (his English is amazing). On Saturday, Matto picked me up and we drove over to Nangoku to take the N2 practice test that our teacher had set up for us. 4 hours of sitting in a cold gymnasium and taking that horrid test... not my ideal for a Saturday afternoon.

That night, I went to a konpa that I helped set-up. The funniest part was that, one of the girls I had originally invited out got sick all of a sudden and had to cancel on me, leaving the numbers lopsided with 3 girls and 4 guys. I told my contact Saturday morning about this, but SOMEHOW ended up getting to ask this new girl in our Japanese class if she wanted to come along! She said yes, even though I'd literally met her 4 days prior, and told her where to meet us in the city. Unfortunately, one of the guys ended up being hung-over and dropped out last minute, BUT we all got to know Sao because of the date so that was a much bigger win than going out with the guys. I say this, because of the three guys left, one was married, and the other two just.... awkwardly didn't say much until after dinner, when we went to a bar called "Boston Cafe" and then to "One Love" to dance. Because married-guy was the only one talking, De- and Sao took over the conversation and it seemed more like a girls outing with some guys observing us, haha. Dancing was a lot more fun, though, because married-guy apparently took ballroom dancing lessons and was spinning us around the floor all night. Anyway, despite the awkward start, the night was a lot of fun and I'm really glad to have a new friend that lives decently close.

And now, a bunch of pictures from Yosakoi.

At the Aki Yosakoi festival: Energizer Bunny, me, Hiro, De- and Nat-chan.

One of the teams that had really fun costumes.

Yukiko!

Love this girls expression

Juri dancing <3

One of the dancing areas had a street that people paraded down

It was such a beautiful day to go see the dancing! So glad I took the day off for it. :)

1600km to Nagasaki and back

Chinese Temple at Temple Row in Nagasaki City

Same Chinese Temple

Another temple on Temple Row

Gunkan Jima

The ruins of Gunkan Jima

Obon parade.

Each family creates a "boat" to honor their deceased relatives.

Everyone parades down the street with their boats, banging gongs and blowing up fire crackers.

The night was rainy and cool so the smoke from the fire crackers gave everything an eerie glow.

Truly a wonderful celebration to be able to witness.

Glover Garden, where all the foreign houses remain.

Glover Garden is located on the side of a mountain so you can get a nice view of the harbor from there.

After three days, I think I've finally recovered from my trip to Nagasaki (two days of 14 hours of straight driving... plus days in between PACKED with walking around Nagasaki city and it's steep steep hills). The above pictures were taken with my 300 Yen film camera (I think I've finally gotten the hang of how to use the old-school focus on the lense) and I think they came out kind of fun :)

Friday was spent driving. Saturday, me and Liz went to Gunkan Jima with her friends and then looked at the temples on temple row. I've wanted to go to Gunkan Jima since mountain sensei told me about it (and his love for ruins) last school year. The island has been people-less since the 80's and is completely broken down and overgrown. An interesting view into a post-apocalyptic world, even on a man-made island!

Sunday we went to Glover Garden where all the old western-style houses remain from the 1800's. They were gorgeous and made me kind of nostalgic for home, haha. Then at night we went to see the last installment of Harry Potter (GREAT ending I thought, even though I never read all the books) and had dinner at the most AMAZING Italian place. REAL cheese on the pizza and REAL ceasar salad dressing!!! Monday was spent at the Nagasaki Peace Museum learning up on the bombings and seeing the Peace Park. Then Monday night, we went to the Obon festival. Apparently obon is celebrated differently in Nagasaki. Everyone builds boats for their family members and parade down the street to the harbor. Once at the habor, the boats are loaded on a barge and then floated out to sea. I think they may also be burned.... but I'm not sure. Anyway, the night was cool and because it was raining, the gongs and smoke from the fire crackers was super cool and eerie. I couldn't look away from it all, the weather was extremely appropriate for the type of ceremony/celebration that was going on.

The whole trip was a lot of fun, and it was nice seeing Liz again (it had been over a year). I also got to indulge in my latest dorky endeavor: collecting all of the "ご当地" "gotochi" postcards. I got 6 prefecture's cards from this trip!!! I also probably wasted a lot of time running around trying to find large post offices in each prefecture... but oh well. It was my VACATION.

More updates on Yosakoi later (since I went the Thursday before Nagasaki and have lots of fun pictures~).

Can't forget Nagasaki's famous food, カステラ〜 sooo yummy <3

Nagasaki!!

  

Went to see Yosakoi yesterday and today I'm off on a 12 hour road trip to Nagasaki to see a high school friend!! Here I go~

Some film photos

Hiro's shoes at the beach

Nat-chan, master rock skipper

Temple in Inokuchi

Bridge over Akigawa

Big City Tokyo VS Big River Run

The last week and a half have been AMAZING (if you don't count the going to work part, of course). The show in Tokyo was spectacular (although a little long... if they had cut out like 2/3 bands it would have been perfect), and I was sooo happy to finally see Your Pest Band and Pear of the West Live! It was even more spectacular going to see friends from work/school and going shopping in Koenji and Shimokitazawa~ I've never wanted to live in a place so badly.... IT'S SO COOL! <3 There are tons of used clothing shops, CD/record shops, and live houses! I'd be broke 100% of the time I lived there, but I'd be the happiest poor foreign girl ever. :)

Then, in response to the above posted picture, on Sunday I got to go to a river run with Nat-chan and the gang. We had to build our own rafts and float them down the Ioki river. The run was a blast (and not to mention thrillingly dangerous at certain parts) and then we had a self-contained nomikai for 5 hours after the run. I got some sun burn on my shoulders and back (which feels like someone is cutting off my skin with a dull knife when I put a shirt on..) but it was totally worth it to spend the day with my awesome Aki-city friends. <3

Fellow punks at Shinjuku Jam

Spalding singing in "WHAT-A-NIGHT'S"

<3<3<3 my Aki friends~