Going to India

A physician I worked with a few weeks ago recommended that I keep a blog of my upcoming rotation in India! I looked and found my old travel blog from my trip in 2006, and re-activated the account! So, as long as I have access, I'll update this from India!

Takayaki Balls!

When I was staying in Kawanoe with Lex we were invited to a dinner party at the home of a woman who was in Lex's adult English class. It was a huge evening with TONS of food. TONS. There were courses upon courses. Alexa, Dennis (a JET from Canada), and I were spoiled rotten and had to roll ourselves out of the house at the end of the night.

The highlight of the night was making takayaki balls. We made them on griddle things that had rounded cutouts. We filled the little bowl things with dough and then added whichever "insides" that we wanted (see bowl of possible fillings :o) ). We made them into balls by scooping and spinning the balls around so that all the sides were browned with the fillings warmed up in the middle. YUM YUM YUM :o)

Random Japan Pics

These are some random pics that I wanted to post, but they are in no particular order.

These first two are of cooking classes. A big group of us foreigners went to a junior high (i think, it may have been elementary though) and taught an "authentic" dish. Dennis is from Canada and he taught the kids to make pancakes from scratch and served them with Canadian maple syrup.





Alexa and I taught our group of kids how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Acutally peanut sauce and jelly sandwiches :o) When we opened up the "peanut sauce" it was this creamy, jelly-like, sweet peanut substance that was definitely more like peanut jelly than peanut butter. The kids loved it though :o)



Scott eating Udon at a little restaurant/soup bar in Osaka. Note the cowboy hat :o)


More Scott :o) There is a matching picture to this. When you go to a Japanese temple there are typically two statues "guarding" the entrance to the area. There is one on either side of the pathway/entrance, I think they are generally lions and one has an open mouth and one has a closed mouth. The open mouthed statues are male and the closed mouth are female. Go figure...

Lex, Scott and I at the end of the Path of Philosphers

A Japanese liquor store! They were everywhere!

This next one is for my Dad :o) In Northern CA there are PLENTY of deer signs along the highway. Since I was young my Dad has pointed out that the deer antlers are backwards on the signs in the US. In the US the deer antlers are pointing towards the deer's back, meaning that whenever the deer leans down for food under a tree, its antlers would get stuck in the branches on the way up. Well, the Japanese proved their genius yet again :o) Note that the antlers in this sign are facing forwards, the correct way. No getting stuck in the bushes for this deer :o)

Starting from the beginning again :o) JAPAN

A very belated update! Let's see what all I remember, this will be a test :o)


This first pic is Me, Lex and Scott posing as a pagoda at the Golden Temple in Kyoto. After we had someone take this pictures we made tons of friends who wanted to have their pictures taken with us. I'm sure they were thinking that they wanted to get a pic with the crazy US tourists...regardless it's a fun picture for us to show our kids what NOT to do when you visit Japan :o) but really to show all the FUN things you can do when you visit Japan.

This next pic is a typical Japanese menu (this script is a bit nicer than the norm, but you get the idea). Solution: PLASTIC FOOD! At most restaurants there was a display of fake food in the front window and all of the dishes looked ridiculously realistic. The drill was to pick a dish and then drag the waitress out to the front and point at what we wanted. Did I mention yet that the Japanese are ingenious?! Well they are and SO people/visitor friendly!

Visiting Hiroshima, as I said before, was an incredibly powerful experience. I truly believe that the world is a better place for each person who visits the city and takes the time to walk through the museum, sit in the park and soak up and grasp the commitment to and message of aspiring towards world peace. The A-bomb dome is on a plot of land that has remained a tribute to the tragedy and is essentially left untouched except for measures done to secure and maintain the integrity of the structure. The area stands on one edge of the Peace Park. There are also displays and displays and more displays of peace cranes that people have sent to Hiroshima from all over the world.

While I was in Hiroshima I walked the Promenade of Peace, one of three different walking trails through the city.

This is me in Miajima and that orange thing in the background is their signature torrey that sits in the water a little way off the land. It's a beautiful orange color that puts my house to shame :o) I enjoyed the contrast. The sky was grey, the mountains were dark and then BAM there was this bright orange structure. It was certainly an eye-catcher. Miajima was one of the places on my trip that felt different than other places. When I took the ferry over I remember that it looked like the water was dancing beneath the boat. It was different than normal light reflection and obviously memorably so.

More Pictures!

Here are more and more and more pictures! This is a limited supply and in no order whatsoever, actually in reverse order, newest to oldest, but I have like 15 minutes on a fast computer, so I loaded all of the decent pictures that I have!

THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD ADVENTURE! last wed-fri...There were 6 of us in a van road-tripping it and camping for three days. The guys are a group of Nicole's friends she met in Cairns.

A pyramid at the beach by the 12 Apostles: top John, middle nicole and me, bottom Pete, Ross and Neil. The sights from the GOR were absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. We walked along this beach all by ourselves and made the first footsteps of the day!

The van! Me, Ross, Neil

In the words of our good friend Ash: "You guys are like koalas, you're cute, kinda nice and you sleep 19 hours a day!" We tend to passout on the long car trips... :o)

CHANTEL'S BEACH HOUSE. My first weekend in Australia Nicole and I went to one of her good friend's house at the beach, it's in Blairgaory, pronounced "Blay-gary". I still have a language barrier, I can't understand most of the time, even though I KNOW that people are speaking English to me. Anyways, Nicole, Chantel, another friend Brooke and I had a girls night eating yummy food and then we went out on the town to the small bar/club.

In the kitchen practicing our self-portraits :o) Yay for camera timers! Me, Nicole, Chantel and Brooke.

Me and Nicole doing some warm-up dancing in the living room :o)

Me and Nicole enjoying our lolly-pops outside the bar :o)

HAPPY St. PATRICK's DAY!

Earlier in the evening Nicole, her parents and I attended the Rugby 7s matches at the Commonwealth Games. Nicole has good friends who are kiwis, so they leant us All Blacks jerseys for the games. New Zealand won the entire tourney, so they were great jerseys to be wearing at the time! We decided not to change before we went out to celebrate the Irish holiday and our attire definitely made the night a little more interesting :o) There is an intense rivalry between Aust and NZ, so people either hated us, loved us, cheered with us or yelled at us all throughout the night. Basically, we got a lot of attention for our All Blacks gear. We ended up having a fabulous night dancing our hearts out, but, much to our disappointment by the time we met up with friends there was no more Guiness left in Melbourne. None at all. No car bombs for us...

Finally some pictures! :o)

Hi! Yay! Finally some pictures! They are a little random, but I'll put some on the old bloggeroo so that you know that I am truly alive and well :o)

Happy St Patty's Day pics!

My first full day in Melbourne was St. Patrick's Day! (hence the green :o)) This is a pic of me and Nicole on the balcony of her fabulous Melbourne apartment. It's awesome, her building is right in the downtown area, so it's within walking distance to just about everything. We've gone to the Botanical Gardens, Queen Victoria Market, Alexander Gardens and tons of Commonwealth Games fun events!

I am in Melbourne during an exciting time, 72 countries participate in the Commonwealth Games every year and this year the games are in Melbourne from March 15-26th. It's sort of like a mini-Olympics without the States and Australia wins pretty much everything :o) We went to 3 events. On St. Patrick's Day we went to the semi-finals and finals of the Rugby 7s tourney, the next Monday and Tuesday we went to the Track and Fields Athletics events. It was awesome! I saw the fastest man in the world run the 100m dash! as well as hurdles, the 5000m, 200m, 400m, triple jump (Adam Pritch, I thought of you :o)) and tons more. It was an energetic environment, everyone clapping and excited about everything. 2 things stand out. One was at the 7s tourney. Kenya beat Samoa for one of the consolation cups and after the game the teams went around to each side of the field and did celebration dances. It was awesome! Samoa did a traditional dance and the Kenyans just danced around, but by the end the Kenyans joined in with the Samoans, learning the dance as they went. It was an awesome display of unity despite cometitive and cultural barriers :o) The next cool thing is a lot less profound, but still cool. Both nights of the athletics events the whole crowd (mon night there were 79,000 people!) did the wave, and an awesome, 3 level, 3-4 round wave at that! It was cool :o)

Me and Nicole in our All Blacks jerseys at the Rugby 7s matches.

Nicole's Dad Dennis, me, Nicole, and Nicole's Mom Carol :o)

JAPAN!

I have the rest of my pics at Nicole's house in Melbourne and we're in Sydney right now, but here are the pics I have with me!

Tuesday March 14th, my last day in Kawanoe...sadness.

Alexa, Sheryl and me after an o-mochi making session at Sheryl's house. Normally it's made with onco or fruit filling, but we brought chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, funny Japanese marshmallows and other fun goodies to put in ours :o)

Back in Osaka

So I was just thinking that it would be fabulous if I could find an hour or so of available internet time to update the good ol bloggeroo and look what I found! I am back in Osaka at the Kansai Int`l Aeropuerto waiting to board my flight to Australia. Fortunately I think it`s 6:30 now and I don`t even board until 9 AND they have a free internet station with a few computers. BRILLIANT!

Here goes an extensive game of catch up!

Note: while reading this you have to realize that Alexa Scott and I talked for probably the entire time that we were traveling together. And I really am not exaggerating. So, while picturing us wandering through Kyoto, Nara etc. imagine us all chit-chatting away to our hearts` content!

KYOTO:

Scott Lex and I stayed at the adorable backpacker B&B thing for two nights (Sat and Sun). Sun we bought bus passes (500 Yen for unlimited use for a day, GREAT deal!) We toured around to numerous shrines and temples (pica and names to come soon!) and, most importantly, walked the Path of Philosophy :o) Yes, we are all that much the wiser! That night was the fateful eve of Scott`s absolute defeat at hearts :o) Also the Coors Light night that turned into a jaunt to Gion in hope of seeing geishas. No luck with the geishas, the weather was rainy, but in our search we found an Irish Pub. Yes, an Irish pub in Japan. Who knew?! Lex and I did car bombs to celebrate the occasion and the night just got more exciting from there. We decided that the Irish Pub was a little too much and headed to find something more authentic. We found a great little restaurant place. In Japan they don`t have many just bars. Most of them are combined with restaurants to keep the tummy full while consuming alcoholic beverages. Great idea. So, we tried out some Japanese treats - chicken skewer things and other easy-to-eat foods as well as plum brandy that they serve either warm, on ice or with soda. Yummy!

We wandered back and then got up the next day and headed to more shrines and temples :o) Is there a theme here?! I will fill in the exact names later. I need Miss Alexas help with that one! But, highlight of the day (besides getting to Alexas that night), at the temple near our little place they offered a trip into the Budda`s womb. So, we wandered down in the PITCH DARK through this hallway while gripping and following a handrail of prayer beads to a room with a single light illuminating a stone that we were instructed to rotate once for eternal good luck! Strange adventure :o)

In Kyoto there were so many little shops and a lot of them offered Mochi samples (Justin - I totally thought of you!). Mochi is a sort of gooey paste made from rice and they made little tasty treats by flavoring it and filling it with chocolate, strawberry, onco etc in the middle. Yum Yum Yum.

After exploring Kyoto we were off to Alexa`s house! We caught numerous modes of transportation but eventually made it to Kawanoe! We got in at night and accumulated two bikes. One was Lexs and the other a fellow ALT`s (assistant language teacher). Scott and I rode with our backpacks and Lex jogged along. 30 minutes later we arrived at Alexa`s humble abode! She lives in an apartment building on the second floor and has a great little place that Scott and I immediately filled up with our stuff (me more than Scott I think... :o)) That night we settled in and watched the Oscars. It was fun to see Scotts reaction to the TV. Long time no watch for that one :o)

The next day (Tuesday) Scott and I headed to school with Miss Alexa where we introduced ourselves and talked about our trips and did mini lessons in four middle school classes. The entrance into the first one was classic. We walk in and there was an immediate eruption of excited screams. Precious. They were excited to see some more foreigners, that's for sure! Whenever we walked down the halls, or really anywhere for that matter, we would get the wave and hello! from students. So cute.

Speaking of cute, the children here are ADORABLE. Seriously the cutest things EVER in their little outfits. So cute.

Tuesday night we headed out to meet the crew. We had dinner and drinks with a big group of Alexa`s friends, both ALT related people and Japanese. We ate and talked and drank for like 5 hours. Fun fun times. We got to meet Dennis(Canadian) and Will(Australian) and Scheff(Hungarian) and Vikrim(American) and Aya and Asagi (both Japanese) and a few other Japanese friends. Good times all around and,　best of all, we brought out Alexa`s woosie, go-bye buuudy voice which had never been released to the Japanese folk. Boy were they in for a lasting treat! By the time I said goodbye to Dennis the next Sunday he was certainly hooked :o)

Wednesday Scott had to leave. It was so fun traveling with him again, and an added bonus was that he was a fountain of traveling around the world knowledge (he:s been working his way around in the opposite direction for about 7 months) so he had excellent advice, which was such an awesome and very helpful bonus! He headed out early in the morning for his trek back to Tokyo to catch a series of flights to Peru, where he:ll be for the next while. After we dropped Scott off at the train station (:o( ) Alexa Dennis and I headed to Dennis` school to teach Cooking Class to his 6th graders! Alexa and I were teaching American Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches, Dennis made homemade Canadian Pancakes, Will made Australian Chocolate Crinkle Treats and a woman from China made Chinese Dumplings! It was an international food fiesta! We all had eventual success despite the fact that when Alexa and I opened up the `peanut cream` we found that `peanut cream` does not translate to `peanut butter`. It literally was cream made of peanuts, and it was a sweet sweet cream. It ended up working out fine, the PB & Js Japan style were more of a dessert than a lunch staple, but the kids loved them! Then we all did presentations about our various countries. Fun times. It was great to be in an educational environment :o)

That night Alexa, another JET David (from the US) and I helped out Dennis with his adult English class. We had `America Day` and they learned the vocabulary associated with traveling. We acted out a hypothetical travel process including a flight, immigration, getting a taxi and checking into a hotel. I was the hotel clerk person :o) It was really fun! David was an awesome new face too. He has traveled to India a few times so I got to ask him lots of questions :o)

The next day I trekked it to Hiroshima. I took the train and then walked the Peace Path from the train station to the Peace Park. I had a great time in Hiroshima. I toured the museum and looked at the monuments. I rang the Peace Bell and walked around the A-Bomb dome. This was also the first time really that I had traveled solo, which was interesting. I have a lot to say about that, but I want to wait to write an entry on that alone. I was absolutely enthralled by the positive vibe that came from the horrible tragedy that was Hiroshima. I learned a lot about the history, but also learned that the mayor of Japan sends letters out every year to countries who have nuclear weapons asking them to please get rid of them for the safety of the world. The accounts of the event were heartbreaking but the museum was phenomenal. I could go on and on, but moral of the story, if you ever get the chance, go to Hiroshima! On that note, if you ever get the chance, go to Japan. I loved it and would probably have never goine had it not been for Alexa. It just isn:t somewhere I would have thought to visit. But, it was WELL worth the trip.

The next day I took the ferry from Hiroshima to Miyajima. (again, pica to come!) Miyajima was incredibly beautiful. There is a bright orange torrey (?sp) in the water that is almost blinding it is so bright, and it most certainly draws attention to itself and exudes a mesmerizing energy. While on Miyajima I took the tram up the mountain. At the top I could see the water and so many islands! It was a clear day so I could see well, which was lucky. At the top there were also these funny monkeys with bright red faces that were actually a little scary. There were signs all over the place warning people that if you looked in their eyes they would attack you! There were also deer out and about.

So, my big adventure for the day, I decided that I would hike down the mountain after I took the tram up. That would have been fine and dandy (and in the end it was anyways) but when I arrived at the trailhead that I planned to follow down to the bottom there was caution tape and a barricade...SO I ended up hiking WAY out of the way through the forest by myself to the bottom of the mountain. Another experience that will be included in my solo travel entry :o) Needless to stay my butt was incredibly sore the next day after walking downhill for an hour and a half!

After my safe decent I headed back to Kawanoe. This time I decided to try out the Japanese Shinkasen, or bullet train. It was way more expensive, but I figured that I had to try it once while I was in Japan. So, the segment that took me 3 HOURS the day before took me 30 MINUTES on the Shink. Craziness. Someone told me that the train goes 200-300 km/hr. I was impressed.

I made it back to Kawanoe much sooner than I thought thanks to the bullet train! and met Alexa at the grocery store so that we could get food for cooking dinners and breakfasts (which we ended up ROCKING) and our `Sex and the City` night with some of her Japanese friends. Unfortunately we couldn`t get Sex and the City VHS with subtitles so we ended up watching Constantine with Keanu Reeves. I don`t really recommend it. But we had fun chit chatting and hanging out. ALexa and I made fresh spring rolls and a fruit and cheese and cracker plate. It was like being at school again! We were little cookers!

WOW, I`ve been typing for awhile. I`m going to try to power through... :o)

On Saturday Alexa and I wandered the hills and made our way up to her favorite place :o) It is this little restaurant in the hills that is called With You :o) this little man runs it and offers an amazing breakfast of eggs, toast, fresh fruit, a salad and coffee for 450 yen (about 4 dollars). It was amazing! Yum yum yum. He was really nice too and asked about what I was doing, how long I was staying in Japan etc. Then we walked back down the hills :o) After our day of hiking Alexa took me to a Japanese onsen which is essentially a public bathhouse. It was so fun! There were four pools of varying temperatures, one outside and a sauna and another room with some salt stuff, we didn:t know what that was about. It was incredibly relaxing and my hill-walking muscles were so very very thankful for the luxury treatment :o) That was another place where we walked in and the women at the front desk just went crazy-bubbly on us. Questions GALORE! They were cute though :o) After the onsen we went home and made Thai curry (I tell you, cooking extraordinaires!) and then met Vikrim at a bar in town not far from Alexa`s house.
We played darts for awhile and then called it a night. Though I did find a brilliant product: Litchi liquor. BRILLIANT. It is like yummy goodness in a drink. Dad, you would love it!

On Sunday Dennis Alexa Scheff and I went to ===== I totally forget the name, so Ill talk about that one later. That night Alexa Dennis and I were invited to dinner at the house of one of the ladies who was in Alexa`s adult English class. Talk about an incredible feast! We made Takoyaki balls at the table and she kept bringing out more and more and more food. Talk about full! They had to roll all of up out of there that night. As an intermission the lady asked Alexa and I if we would tape record a reading of the story Peter and the Wolf. We happily obliged. Alexa was the narrator and I acted out the voices of the characters :o) Coming soon to a store near you! :o) It was an awesomly insightful experience to get to go to a Japanese house and have a real meal Japanese style. Everyone sat on the floor (there were 12 of us) and there was, as I said, more food than I can even describe. The husand and kids were there too as well as some other family friends.

OK, I have to stop there. Ive been typing for more than an hour...I will finish though. Eventually! And, I have all my pictures on CD, so it will be easy to upload them once I get to a computer with a CD drive. To anyone who said that 700 pics should be enough, I already have 280! But, another bit of wonderful travel wisdom, Alexa and Scott enlightened me to the idea of putting the pica on CDs (which can be done easily almost anywhere) and uploading and sending them home that way. Brilliant!

Hugs to you all!

Things that make Japan Japan

Here are some of the stand-out features of Japan thus far:

Vending machines everywhere and for everything. Water, tea, hot chocolate, cigarettes, liquor (yes, they have vending machine liquor stores on the streets everywhere) and more.

Bowing. People bow all the time. Its a greeting, a sign of respect and I end up doing it billions of times a day!

Face masks. A lot of people wear white face masks that go around their ears and cover their mouth and nose. We are a little unsure if the motivation is to keep germs in or out, but lots of people of all ages where them around.

Itty bitty cars. The vehicles here are TINY. Serious mini-me style. The trucks are little, the cars are little, the vans are little...and they drive on the left instead of the right. Wierd.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A partial update

Lo sient for the blog hiatus, the internet access has been MIA for a few days :o) and its been a pretty busy few days. Hard to believe that I was ever in Osaka! I`ll work on catching you up though :o)

That night in Osaka I went to see the castle, but it started raining so it was a short and sweet trip. The plum blossoms were out though and it was GORGEOUS! We saw the castle but didnt venture in. We went plastic food shopping instead :o) A lot of restaurants in Osaka have these ridiculously and impressively realistic plastic models of the food they offer out in front of the restaurant so that non-Japanese speakers such as myself can actually make a somewhat educated food decision :o) It actually works really well, but its kind of a funny process. We stand out in front of the restaurant, decide which model looks good and then ask the waitress to come outside and we point to what we want. Efficient and a half. It helps with the good ol language barrier :o)

At dinner the tiredness hit. I figured that at that point I had slept about 7 hours in the past 3 days...not so much and certainly not enough shut-eye. We ate, walked through a cool marketplace and then headed back to the Raizan. I went up to take a nap before Lex was supposed to get there at 10 and ended up waking up to a miss alexa and mr scott knocking on my door. Such a great awakening! We had a few minutes of awe-filled reunion. Such an amazing coincidence that we could all be there at the same place and time. Scott heading east around the world, me heading west and lex settled somewhere in the middle. Scott came bearing gifts too. Yak jerky (it turned into a yummy snack on the bus from Kyoto to Lex`s) and a 6-pack of Coors Light from China, with pull-tops none the less! (these guys made it to the hotel in Kyoto where we enjoyed them while Lex schooled me and Scott in hearts...yes scott, its here in history, you cant deny it, you got WORKED (for the third time??!!) :o) So so fun. I cant even go into how exciting it was to see them and how fun it has been to travel together these last few days (though we were certainly missing our fourth international travel fun friend...). We had about a billion `zoom out` moments. The `oh, here we are walking the streets of Japan together as if its an everyday thing` moments that boggle my mind. The reunion was energizing and we headed out to a little restaurant to get some food before heading to sleep.

The next day we went to the Osaka castle again and saw the blossoms rain-free! Then we caught a train for Nara where we saw shrines and temples galore. There were billions of deer and one of them ate Alexas map. Oops. They were really pushy though! There was one particularily pushy deer who wouldnt leave us alone and this lady came over to us, pulled purple post-its out of her purse and fed them to the deer as she excitedly exclaimed and explained how much the deers like to eat paper! and glue too apparently... We ended up making it to a night of a fire-festival in Nara. The festival lasts from March 1-14ish, but we were there for a ceremony where men rolled tumbleweed balls of fire up a hill, ran across the front of the temple with the ball and shook sparks on the people below. There were thousands of people and it was certainly an interesting tradition! Im glad we werent standing beneath the sparks though, im sure its an honor, but sometimes pretty big chunks of fire would fly down, and, regardless, people would scream each time a fire-ball was shaken even though there must have been at least 20 fireballs. Fun times :o) Alexa also introduced Scott and I to vending machine hot chocolate. yum yum yum and a perfect way to warm up on a cold day.

That night we navigated out way to Kyoto and stayed at an ADORABLE guest house. It was the bottom floor of a house, sort of like a Japanese backpacker style bed and breakfast. The family was great, there was a mom a dad and two little kids. The mom was amazing. Super energetic, helpful, SO excited to have us etc. We stayed there both nights that we were in Kyoto and LOVED it. Definitely recommed it to anyone headed that direction! It was centrally located too, major plus.

Sooo, I didnt get very far, but thats a bit for now :o) I hope all is well and Ill write more soon!