Kyoto and More Bugs

Well, Friday I had an orientation in Kyoto that I had to go to. It was actually kind of fun. I like Kyoto. It's a big city with a lot going on, but it's less...overstimulating than Tokyo. It's still pretty overstimulating though.

After the orientation classes we walked around in the shopping districts. I got Alex a birthday present (His birthday is Sept. 2nd - No I'm not going to say what it is! He reads this thing!) and stopped at a 100-yen store to pick up some essentials that we didn't have around the house, but were just common things, like a bathroom stool and a little lunchbag for my bento box. It has English on it. It's grammatically OK, but it's all cute and stuff.

So after the shopping was done, I wasn't going to walk around with the couple of guys, 'cause I wanted to take the train home that night, and there aren't many trains that go to my local station at night because I'm out in the middle of nowhere. So if I wasn't on the train from Kyoto by...like...6:30, I wouldn't be able to get home. So I said goodbye at the nearest subway station and headed down to find my way. Turns out the subway line I took doesn't go to Kyoto station, and doesn't connect with any other lines that DO go to Kyoto station. But I had like an hour and a half, and the road I was on went straight down to the station, so I figured I'd just walk.

Bad idea.

I walked, and I walked, and I walked, and I walked. and I walked. AND I WALKED. I met some people at a big intersection, and approached them, asking them in Japanese if this road goes straight to the station. They were astonished by my Japanese and said yes, it did, but it was a little ways yet, and asked if I needed to catch a train urgently. They said they were headed down that way as well, and they would walk with me. Turns out they were Korean tourists and had just come from Okinawa, so they were flabbergasted that an American had managed to learn Japanese. It was cute.

So I walked some more with them, the pace picking up near the end...long story short, I was walking/speedwalking for that entire hour and a half and ended up sprinting to my train. But I caught it! I was bummed out though because Kyoto station is an awesome place to shop, and I was hoping to do some looking around at the import store, Jupiter. (I craaaaaaave mexican food!)

Over the weekend, we had a couple of my students prank our apartment, you know, the ringing the doorbell and running away thing. It happened like three times, so I hid out on our balcony after closing our door somewhat loudly the last time, and when they crept back up I popped up and was like, "Miemasu yo..." (I can see you...) They freaked out, fidgeted, and were like, "Natalie-sensei! ...er...Nice to see you!" *FLEE* I talked to Sekiguchi-sensei (one of the English teachers at the middle school who lives in the same apartment building) and she laughed. Since everyone who lives in that complex pretty much works for the school system, it's a common playground for the students.

Today I saw a massive, beautiful dragonfly at school. Turns out it's called an "oniyanma" and is what the Yanma pokemon is named after. I was amused.

Turns out the Japanese eat these too. I hope to god I don't have to make an entry about that.

Okay, back on topic.

So here we are in Japan.

Alex and I left the U.S. on August 1st. I spent a three day orientation in Tokyo before heading to my assigned area - Iwataki. Iwataki is actually one-third of a larger town called 'Yosano'. But Iwataki, Nodagawa, and Kaya (the two towns to the south) were all three so incredibly tiny that they merged into Yosano a few years ago.

Lots of interesting things have happened that I wanted to write about but just didn't have the time. Hopefully now I'll be able to keep track of everything more easily, and therefore be able to have this blog to remember upstairs.

This morning I asked the music teacher, Ms. Fujimura, where I could buy a violin. I have a violin at home, but it'd be cheaper to just buy a cheap school-grade violin than have my regular one shipped carefully over to me by air-mail. She got all excited. She asked if I could sing, too. The English teacher informed me that she wants to play a duet, piano/violin, at the Culture Festival coming up next month. When she asked me if I can sing, I said I could, but my range was kind of weird....I'm sure it came out in Japanese as "My singing stovetop is unusual." (The Japanese word for stovetop is ガスレンジ (gasurenji - "Gas Range") and the word for microwave is 電気レンジ (denkirenji - "Electric Range") - of course the word for an electric stovetop is 電気ガスレンジ　(denkigasurenji - "Electric Gas Range" - classic) so when I talked about my singing range and used the word 'renji' I'm sure it wasn't the right choice!

The last couple days have been ...buggy. Even before the bee-eating incident. The previous day, I had to save the brass band from a marauding bee (Not just any bee, but a legendary Japanese suzumebachi - check it out on Wikipedia for the full horror. This is also the kind of bee that I ate) and had the unique opportunity to gently hold a Japanese emerald swallowtail butterfly after it kept smacking against the classroom window and let the gorgeous little moron outside. Those emerald swallowtails are absolutely everywhere. I love it. And they're about the size of my hand.

We also have some pretty massive spiders around. The garden spiders are actually kind of pretty, but the ones that hang out outside our apartment are pretty nasty. I'd freak out if one of them just popped up anywhere, since, they're still spiders and they're still huge. But I'll see if I can't get some pictures.

Alex and I got a gorgeous camera for our wedding - an Olympus SP-510UZ. The problem is, most of our camera memory cards were SD cards and this took an XD card - until recently I had my own little digital camera, and we used the old one usually because it could use SD cards. But after we sold it at the garage sale, we discovered that our awesome new camera only had capacity for 16 pictures without any sort of card.

So last night Toshiko, one of the ladies from the eikaiwa (English Conversation) group - an adult group of friends who gets together at a local izakaya (a sort of restaurant that just brings a bunch of group dishes and alchohol. It's a restaurant perfectly suited for getting together and hanging out) and talks and gossips and laughs in English - took us to an electronics store. Toshiko is absolutely hilarious. The store is called KS-Denki (Denki = 電気 - Electric Power) but when people say it it sounds like they're saying K-Stanky. We bought a 2 gig memory card for the camera and now have capacity for about 1100 pictures. Woowoo!

What else, what else. Alex made a really good dish last night with tofu, egg, and goya (Japanese 'bitter melon' - Wikipedia it, it looks freakish!). It was a great experiment. It was a little...bitter...but goya is always bitter, and next time we'll just cook it for longer. It's really good for you though, so that's fun.

Today I'm ordering a bento lunch. This school doesn't actually have a school lunch, so most of the teachers order one from a nearby restaurant. The restaurant employs mentally handicapped people, so that's pretty cool. I'll try to take a picture of the bento to show everybody. Yesterday's was pretty cool.

I think that's pretty much all for now. One of the students keeps screaming "KAWAIIIIIIII" when she sees me, following up with "SO CUTE" or "SO PRET-TY" in adorable middle-school English. She'll be fun in class when it starts.

I think I'm going to keep track of the stuff I talk about in the tags. Like posts with Japanese words and stuff in them I'll tag 'Japanese vocab' and cooking posts I'll tag as 'Japanese Food' or something. <3

I ATE A BEE

I wanted my first post to be something really cool, and explaining everything that's happened to put us in Japan. I wanted to write something about where we are, and the school I'm working at, and the teachers, and the apartment....

BUT I ATE A FLIPPING SESAME-FLAVORED BEE THE SIZE OF MY PINKY FINGER.

All else just seems secondary.