Iwate: Two (Pictures)

Forwarning: This is a massive picture post, so 56k modems beware.

Sorry this took so long. I get bored uploading pictures when it takes forever with the internet being slow, other wise this would have been here sooner.


This is at the ice cream place I went with Harumi's family.


This is Mount Iwate, the "Fuji" of the north.


The baby sheep at Koiwai farm.


Here is Harumi and I making senbei at Morioka handi-crafts square. The senbei in Morioka is a lot better than the senbei in the rest of the country I think. The type of senbei in Morioka is called "nanbu" which I found out is the name of the tribe that used to be in control of north Japan a long time ago.


A picture of the snow in the handicraft square. It was about shoulder high.


This is at the obervation tower at Mar(l?)ios at Morioka. It was only 20 stories, which is hardly an observation tower in Tokyo. I thought that was kind of funny.


More of the observation tower.


Here is the sign off the highway for the Karumai exit.


Here is me learning how to give CPR to a dummy.


Here is Ameri doing the same.


Here is Hayakawa and Ameri at the craft fair last Sunday.


One of the two grocery stores in Karumai, and it even has a parking lot. Amazing.


At the pool, yep that's me in a swimming cap.


Here are the guys I ran with Monday. They are 2nd and 3rd year high school students. (which is like 11th and 12th grade in the US) I don't really remember their names, I'm already bad enough with names as it is. But in Japanese, I'm awful.


Yuuki and I, he's the guy that picked me up before the practice and was quite talkative. Unlike the other guys who weren't quite sure what to say.


Hayakawa's mother, Sechiko, and Ameri at lunch time


The high school in Karumai. I'm not sure what the signs were saying, I thought it might have been awards because it looked like peoples' names. But I couldn't really read all the kanji.


At the high school this building is where all the athletic clubs had their locker room type rooms. Guys on the bottom, girls on the second floor. I thought this was kind of convienient. A lot better than when I was in cross country and our area was the locker room of the guest football team.


These are the people who came on Tuesday to run. Once again, their names didn't get planted in my head. The two people to the left of me are two giggly girls who didn't have much to say to me except girly giggles.


They had a lot of signs like these in Karumai. It says in Japanese-English "Silver Zone". Silver is used as a euphanism sometimes for old people, kind of like in English, "senior". It comes from the silver hair.


I think this was the main river in Karumai, at least it seemed to be the main river. At that time a lot of swan were migrating back north. You can see a few of them. The swan were about the only thing making noise ever.


This is the Higashiyama family. I ate dinner with them Tuesday night. Mr. Higashiyama has a blog that he told me about. So visit it if you can read Japanese. (here)


And here is all of the Hayakawa family the last night I ate dinner with them.


I'm a dork and took a picture of my futon just to compare with my crap bed at the dorm.


This is the main street of Karumai. With the rush hour traffic.


Just some random scenery from the bus on the way to Morioka. The clouds were really low so it looked neat.


This is at Iwate park in Morioka.


These are the walls of Morioka castle, the only thing left of the castle are the walls around Iwate park. Which look kinda neat.


A bridge at Iwate park.


A sign by the river saying not to fish because you could hit your poles on the electric lines.


The main building of the Bank of Iwate.


A graveyard in Morioka near a shrine. There were a lot of new flowers and decorations out because a couple days ago was the spring memorial day.


This is at the Demon handprints in the rock shrine. I looked all around but didn't see any handprints.


Here is the explanation of the rocks if you want to zoom in and read it.


I thought this was pretty neat. It's a little street in front of a shrine with gates leading up to it.

Iwate: Part One

I just got back from Iwate and I typed all this up earlier and I'll put all the pictures in another post later today maybe.

Friday: I got to the bus stop at Ikebukuro pretty early and for no good reason. The night bus was of course late by about 30 minutes. The bus stop at Ikebukuro is interesting. The name of it is 三越裏 (Mitsukoshi-ura). Which literally means “Behind Mitsukoshi”. Mitsukoshi is like Macy’s or some sort of posh department store. But anyway, it really is just a bus stop behind the department store and kind of far from the station. I would have thought that for a bus stop for a major company would be in a easy to find spot near the station. But this is Japan. Reason need not visit. So the bus finally left about midnight. Compared to the night bus to Kyoto, this night bus was heaven. It wasn’t 100 degrees and no one was snoring. And they even had a sink and drinking water. But of course this was a bus so you can’t really sleep too much.

Saturday: I got to Morioka station about 7am. As soon as a I stepped off the bus, I knew I wasn’t in Tokyo. For one it was like 5 degrees (I had left Tokyo in 16 degree weather) and another I saw a parking lot. One of Hayakawa’s (My teacher from high school that I was meeting) friends met me at the station. Her name was Harumi. We went to her house and her mother had made a big breakfast for me. I met all the family and whatnot. This was the first house outside of Tokyo that I had been in, in a long time. I was so used to closet sized apartments, Harumi’s house seemed like a mansion. After breakfast we went for a family drive. First we went to this ice cream place and had some ice cream. Then we went to Koiwai farm to see the sheep that had just been born. On the way you could see the mountains pretty well so of course we stopped to take pictures. After the farm we went to the Morioka hand craft square and bought senbei. Senbei is like a cracker thing. In Morioka they are sweet but in Tokyo they are really salty. We then returned to their home and dropped off her parents. And they gave me a bunch of souvenirs and then we went to the station. Harumi wanted me to try “Morioka Reimen”, a famous food from Morioka. 冷麺 (reimen) means cold noodles. The taste of cold noodles is interesting. But it was pretty good. (a better description here). After lunch I went to catch the bus to 軽米 Karumai where Hayakawa and his family live. The bus ride was about 90 minutes and pretty uneventful. Except for the fact that the bus driver wasn’t polite, I felt right at home. When I got to Karumai I quickly found out I was in the middle of nowhere. The word in Japanese for “country side” is 田舎 (inaka). And that, it was. I was going to be staying at Hayakawa’s parents’ home since they had extra room. I was again pretty surprised at the room they had. This was no closet sized apartment on the 8th floor in Tokyo. Hayakawa and I then walked the dog and he gave me a sort of tour of the city. It took about 20 minutes. We walked over to his apartment and said hello to his wife and then talked to the token white person that lives in the same building. She’s an English teacher from Canada. Hayakawa said that there are 3 foreigners in Karumai. I probably would have found that out anyway though, because during the week almost everyone I met referred to the other English speakers in the village. I guess we are expected to have some sort of ESP English link. Later on we had dinner at Hayakawa’s parents house. I met Ameri, Hayakwa’s daughter. Her name “Ameri” is because the Hayakawa’s liked America so much. She was born shortly after they came back to Japan. They told her at first that I was her American brother. But at first she wasn’t believing that and when they asked her who I was she said “外国人” (gaikokujin-foreigner). During the dinner they kept on giving me food as soon as I was finished. They had heard Americans eat a lot and were always surprised when I didn’t eat my weight in food like Americans are rumored to. I then had a nice sleep in a comfortable bed without a busy street to wake me every hour. I think the only time I get good sleep is when I go out of town thanks to that horrible excuse for a bed at the dorm.

Sunday: Sunday morning I got up and ate once again a huge meal. Then I went with お父さん (otousan-father, Hayakawa’s father) (in Japanese you usually call older people by “father” or “grandpa”) to some sort of Senior home where the village was having some sort of festival. I didn’t really understand it fully. I just ate a lot. And once I learned how to do CPR. And then I was dressed with weights so I could see how it feels like to be old. We then went to the grocery store with Ameri to get some stuff for lunch and dinner. For lunch we had leftovers from the night before. Since I haven’t had any sort of leftovers in at least 6 months, it was a good feeling. It’s amazing what you miss. In the afternoon Hayakawa, Ameri and I went to the indoor swimming pool. The pool is in the next prefecture over, 青森 (aomori), so I thought we were going to be driving for a long time. But it turns out Karumai is right on the Iwate/Aomori prefecture border. Fancy that. So I got to add another prefecture to my list of those visited in Japan.(Here's a map, it's in Japanese but not so hard to figure out.) I guess it’s a rule in Japanese pools that you wear a swimming cap, so I got to wear a cap and go swimming. I felt like a 50’s movie. After swimming we went back to the parents’ house for dinner. お母さん (okaasan-mother), was worried that her food wasn’t good since I wasn’t eating the rumored amount Americans are supposed to eat. But it was really good, so I had to explain that there are Americans that eat reasonable amounts of food. I being one of them.

Monday- I joined Hayakawa’s high school running club for one of the practices. It was one of the coldest days of the week (like 2 degrees) with really strong wind. And it was also snowing. So half of the time I was running my face was frozen. But it was good times. I ran with one of the students, Yuuki. He was really talkative which was good. Japanese young people are usually really shy around new people and even shyer around non-Japanese people, especially in the country. I was worried I would be the awkward white person who no one would talk to. Pretty much my high school reality, only everyone was white except for “the wall”. After running I came back and had lunch and all that. Then in the afternoon I watched the daily kid’s TV spot on NHK with Ameri. I thought the Brits had a monopoly on scary kid’s TV shows like Boomba and Teletubbies but Japan has them beat by a long shot. Every now and then a show would come on and make Ameri cry. I think I would have been scared of every one of those shows as a kid. At night we went to the 温泉 (onsen), a Japanese hot spring. I had always sort of wanted to go to one, but in Tokyo the closest ones are pretty far and expensive. And also, in the onsen, it’s pretty much public nudity and being American and taught that nudity is a working of the devil much like social health care or carbohydrates, my internal fear kept me from pursuing it too much. I was kind of worried since I’d be the only foreigner in a giant hot tub with a bunch of naked Japanese men (graphic but true). But it turned out to be really nice. The water is naturally heated from geysers in the earth and has all sorts of minerals and such. So it leaves you with a いい気持ち (good feeling). The whole onsen culture is pretty interesting. Before Japan had a lot of western influence, it used to be that men and women all went together but now that is really rare and all bathhouses are segregated. But for little kids, they may go with their moms and dads into the onsen and it’s no big deal. I read once that it’s supposed to be a way to teach kids to be comfortable. The bath room had 2 rows of showers where you were supposed to wash yourself before entering the bath. There was the actual onsen in the middle of the room. Outside was the 露天風呂 (rotenburo) which is just the onsen but outside. These are what you normally see pictured as “onsen". (read more here.) Afterwards we had dinner at the onsen’s diner sort of restaurant.

Tuesday: Once again I got up to go running with the running club. This time more students came, but the girl I was running with was really shy and barely said a word. The wind once again was really strong but it wasn’t snowing that day. I ended up running like 10k and about killing myself afterwards I was so sore. After the practice they had a sort of pep talk and I didn’t catch a lot of it but it sounded a lot like cross country. Good times. Later on in the day I went to meet a friend of Hayakawa’s. His name was Mr. Higashiyama. He is in Hayakawa’s English club that meets in Karumai. I had dinner with his family. We had sukiyaki, which is a kind of dish that you stew everything and then stir it in a raw egg. Well there is a lot more to it, but that is basically it. I was kind of nervous at first since I had all those PSA’s running in my head about the dangers of eating raw eggs and making sure you cook meat properly. But it was really good so who cares. (once again, someone else can explain it better.) After the sukiyaki, his wife made ceremonial Japanese green tea. She was a master of the tea ceremony in a club she was in before. Mr. Higashiyama is really into current events and politics so in my horrible Japanese I got to explain the perils of American society and the downfall of western civilization. He was the first Japanese person I heard even care about politics besides the guy constantly outside Shinjuku yelling into a bullhorn about the Iraq war.

Wednesday: I decided against running again for the sake of every muscle in my body punishing me for running with serious Japanese high school student runners. Mr. Hayakawa’s (my teacher’s father) sister came over and visited for a bit and then I went with them to Ohno campus. In the summer they have all sorts of handmade goods and whatnot, but this time it was kind of dead. We had lunch at the cafeteria of soba. Soba is a typical noodle from the tohoku region I think. It’s a sort of buckwheat noodle. It’s probably one of the more tasteless things Japan has to offer, but with sauce you can actually taste something. (An non-rambling write-up)

Thursday: Did the whole goodbye thing. The bus for Morioka left at 10:30 am. I always feel weird with Japanese goodbyes because I never seem sincere. I think it's because Japanese is such a polite language that when you actually are polite (to me) it seems fake. I guess I'm just used to people being rude unless they have to be nice, unless you're in the south and everyone is condesendingly polite to you. I think I was one of 6 passengers on the bus from Karumai to Morioka. I was going to meet Harumi again in Morioka at 7:30pm, and I got to Morioka about 12:00, so I had some time to say the least. I walked pretty much everywhere downtown and to the temples nearby. It would have been a little better if it hadn't had rained, but it was interesting none the less. I definately got some stares because I'm sure everyone in Morioka knows the local foreigners and I wasn't one of them. Once this lady stopped me and put some sort of UFO shaped lamp in my hand and was trying to sell it to me. Luckily I pulled the "I don't speak Japanese" card and told her "Yen, none". It was kind of funny, she was telling me that it was cheap and discounted from 3900 yen to 1100 yen. Strange. I then met Harumi and we went to eat Jaja-men. Jaja-men is another one of those foods famous from morioka. A better description ishere. It was also pretty good. After dinner we went to the a cliff where you could see the city at night. It was a lot prettier than Tokyo at night I thought. Than we went to the biggest shrine in Morioka and saw where students had put their prayers for upcoming entrance exams on little boards. Then it was time to go. The bus ride this way back was of course crap. Some redneck was snoring really loud next to me. Times like that I wish I was in America because someone would have thrown something at him a long time ago. Japan is just too polite.