Lazy?

Who, me? No, no, I simply...was far too busy to be bothered with such things as this, yes! Yes, that's the reason I haven't started up a blog or anything until now. Yes, that is the reason and that is what I'm sticking with. I trust you will learn to live with it.


So, I currently reside near the city of Ina in Nagano prefecture for those who don't know. It is rather nestled between two mountain ranges towards the Southern part of the prefecture. Just google-maps it. Now, I have put up all of my photos onto facebook so far, so there they shall remain. I might put some here too sometimes, but for the most part anything I take will go there completely.


So this week has been Golden Week. Longest holiday of the year, so there is a lot of travel happening across the country. There's children's day, emperor showa's birthday, and greenery day. One fell on Sunday, giving us Monday off. The others fell on Thursday and Friday, so there was only a little bit of work this week. There aren't any particular celebrations or traditions, just...they're holidays. Like there's one in July called Ocean Day. It's just meant to provide a 3-day weekend for the most part.


So, after about 2 weeks of my being here, we had an English teacher "enkai" - it's basically a little party where we go out and eat, drink, whatever. It was to welcome me, and to say goodbye to the ALT I am essentially replacing called Sarah. Oddly enough, she's from around where I lived back home...we also were one year apart in schooling and went to the same university....hmmm... xD
I really liked the enkai, because it meant we could all really chat together without work. ^^


Now, I was surprised by the number of us foreign teachers there are in Nagano- a lot! SO a couple weekends ago, a bunch of us gathered in a town called Matsumoto in a big park and we held a competitive (by region) field day event thing~ we did life-size Sorry! game board, had lunch, and did relay races-- like the eggs on spoons and everything xD We did jump rope as well! We all wore colors according to our regions- mine was yellow. 

Also, we played kibasen. This is a game younger kids and middle schoolers play. What you do is you have three people hoist up one person, and you call it a horse. The person on top attacks other "horses" in our case, you had to get the hat off of the other horses heads. If you're curious, look up kibasen, it's really funny. In the end, it was our team who won the whole thing, and I was told it had been some time since we won, so it was a really big deal. xD


After this, some of us went back to this guys house for a BBQ. I made stir-fried beef noodles for my dinner with this other girl Molly. It was nice to just sit with other teachers and hear stories and such. Also, I had a horrible sunburn, and it's taken these 2 weeks to make it go away. xD But well, that day happened to be really hot and sunny which I had not at all anticipated- all week the forecast kept saying rain everyday, but....well it seems weather here likes taking after Michigan. xD


Now last weekend, my friend Annica came from another prefecture, Shiga (where I have always been the other times I came here) to see Nagano and hang out. We had fun foreigner times in which I had to pick her up at an unexpected train station at night, and of course, I had gotten lost on the way...not a big deal! It was an adventure, of course~


Next day, we went all over town to various shops and places from the supermarkets to clothing stores, and she bought this huge cute pillow for a good price~ we also walked along the river- called Tenryuugawa or "Sky/Heaven Dragon River" xD but you can get mountains and flowers in photos of the river too~

Lately, they've been flooding the rice fields in the area-- that's what those little...sort of "lakes"! They do this in the spring, so it isn't like that forever. I took this photo from my window, actually!

The next day, we found a really great bread shop in the area and we were able to eat outside. ^^ We stayed inside for the most part after that though. But the next day, we went up to Matsumoto to explore. We walked around to go to a mall, and we went to the castle. It is fairly famous, never having been re-built or anything, as I'm aware. There were huge koi fish in the moat too-- wanting to eat a lot. xD

It was from there that Annica went back home and I came back- the next day was work after all.

But because of Golden Week, I only had 2 days of work. Actually one of the days one of my teachers (that I work with) was using a dialogue that we actually looked at in Tokyo training, interestingly enough @@;

The first day of this break, I went up to Nagano City by myself. I wasn't really sure what was there, but I really felt like an adventure. So I got to a surrounding stop, and I ended up walking quite a way to go to a sushi place for lunch, and then going back to wait for a train. I got into Nagano, which is a fairly big city. In any case, it was kind of nice to be in an urban type of place, go to Starbucks, stare at the buildings and the people. XD The train ride takes a few hours, but it's not so bad.

Also, on the way to Nagano, an old woman sat next to me. I had borrowed a book from my schools library called "I Am A Cat" in English. This was written by Natsume Soseki, and for those who don't know, he's basically one of the most famous Japanese writers in history. He lived from 1867 to1916, and he wrote several books and pieces of writing. I had read a bit of his work in some of my classes in school, and I had heard he wrote this book, about a cat basically observing how selfish humans are and such. It sounded interesting and I was really surprised that my middle school's library had an English version, so I borrowed it.

I was reading it while this elderly woman sat next to me. Not long before her stop, she started to talk to me in Japanese, as she said she didn't know English. But she commented on my book (it had the Japanese version of the title written on it as well), and she asked me all kinds of things like where I got the book, if I liked it, what I knew about the author, where I'm from, what I do, etc. She was pretty nice, and I'm not really used to people talking to me on a train, it doesn't happen all that much. Usually people ignore each other on the train. She got off at the Matsumoto stop, which, by the way- does a little jingle whenever a train comes in, just saying "Matsumooootoooo" three times. I don't really get it, but I'm amused nonetheless, since I've never been at any other stop that does this at all. 

On my way back, I didn't have any problems until I got back to the train station parking lot for my car. It costs about 100 yen (80 cents) per hour to park. My fee was 1000 yen (about $10-$11). Now the lowest I had on me was a 5000 yen ($50-$60) piece on me, and it turned out the parking thing didn't accept higher than 1000 yen pieces. Mind you, it was also already dark, and pouring quite heavily. I had already put the ticket in, and I couldn't take it back. So, I had to use the intercom and call someone- the guy said to exchange my money at a nearby shop. I didn't want to go back to the station, since the guys were just leaving, plus I didn't want to stray too far from my car, which I had to keep by the gate because of the ticket...

However, there weren't even convenience stores nearby, that's why I kinda was figuring the intercom would help, but no....xD So with the heavy rain, I dashed across the road like a drowned rat into an "izakaya"- this is kind of liek a bar, but it also has a fair amount of food there-- mostly bar food: things that are fried, things on sticks, munchies, etc. I had to call one of the women workers over and ask her about it. Luckily she understood me and she was nice so it wasn't a problem. Still, I don't get why 5000 yen pieces are a problem... >>; and I got all wet. xD

I know you probably wanna hear about things at school, but deal with it. They days seem to run together more or less, so clear memories are few for me. I'll start recording them once work starts up again. I will relay this much, though. Once I went to the bathroom, and when I came out of the stall, some of the girls who had just come in to chat were so surprised that they were visibly shaken. Is it bad that I find that hilarious? After that, a few of them spoke at me like "I like Lauren" before running off. xD

Another one of my hobbies is making dumb faces to get them to pay attention. Also, when walking around the class during activities, I enjoy creeping up behind kids who aren't doing the activity, and freaking them out by being right there when they turn around. ....Is that bad? xDD; I'll explain about school structure and days later on when work starts up again and I have clearer things to remember.

As for today, I have a Japanese friend, who helped me settle in originally. Today she invited me over for a BBQ at her house. There was supposed to be other friends of hers, but one of the kids of her friend's got chicken pox, so they didn't come. But I met her husband, her 2 kids (6-year-old- boy and 3-year-old girl), and the boy's 2 little friends, both 5. The Dad made all kinds of things on the barbecue, chicken, onion, beef, squid, shrimp, meatballs, mushrooms-- it was really cool, we were eating on the back porch with an overhead tarp thing- the weather was so nice, there were even some final sakura trees around, and the wind was blowing petals around like it was snowing-- so beautiful, but I was in a rush to leave the house and forgot camera. Uuugh I really need to stop doing that. She told me her husband is quite shy ( I can relate xD ) so I didn't have a lot of interaction. But her, Sayaka, is very friendly so it was easy to make friends. ^^

 We also had broccoli, pickled items, and kimchi, and wrapped up in lettuce. It was really really good. The kids spent a lot of time running around. I made faces a them, of course. xD Actually, I originally wasn't fond of kimchi but to be honest, I really enjoyed it! So maybe I actually do like it~ xD I dunno...But my hatred of natto will never change- that much I confirmed at my last lunchtime at school. >>; (natto = fermented soybeans. Nasty smell, nasty taste, stringy and creepy texture. But very good for you of course). No offense to you natto lovers out there- I'm actually pretty jealous- I want to like natto, but it's just not possible.

We also went into their garden area, which has a kind of backdrop- the kids were exploring the area, getting their feet super dirty. Sayaka had made cheesecake and banana cake too- we ground up some coffee and had snack time- it was really good and we talked about a bunch of things for a while. At this point it began raining outside....even though it was sunny and there weren't any clouds. I still can't figure that one out...

Still after this, we drove out to this zoo/organic market. Basically there's a small zoo of horses, rabbits, goats, a couple of monkeys, a black bear and some peacocks. You can feed them carrots. The kids went crazy with it, and again, were running around everywhere. xD I went with Sayaka to the organic vegetable/fruits market across the road- it looked like good stuff, for actually decent prices-- I'll be returning at some point for sure! 

But the highlight of that trip was probably...well, it seems that sometimes a food here is bugs. In one area, you could try a sample. Dead bug eggs and dead grasshoppers. At first, I outright refused but then at the end, I tried a grasshopper. xD I know- me, do such a thing? Crazy, right? But I did it! It was rarther sweet- reminded me of something caramelized I think. Honestly, it wasn't bad, though I did buy a cheap hot cocoa to wash it down. xD

From here she took me back to my place and gave me curry and bread. She's sooo nice! I'm excited to hang out again!

So aside from work, that's about it for now. Like I said, later on I'll talk about work.