Big crab

Our friends Jason and Yumi got married back in November. We went to the ceremony in Yumi's church, then to the celebration dinner at an Indonesian restaurant. Apparently at Japanese weddings it is common to play some kind of game after dinner, rather than dancing or anything. This is the only Japanese wedding we've been to, so we don't know that for sure, but Jason and Yumi had a bingo game. I used my extensive bingo skills to capture the first prize: a choice of one of a number of specialty foods from around Japan that would be delivered by mail to my apartment. Despite some advice to take the beef on offer, I chose Hokkaido crab. It came a few days later - one large crab. It's currently residing in our freezer, of which it takes up nearly a third. We're still deciding the best way to cook it.
-Jason

All I Want For Christmas is (Yu)

Although they don't celebrate Christmas, the Japanese like the decorations and the music. They play English carols at all of the stores and really, really like the song "Last Christmas" by Wham! I don't really consider this a Christmas song, but it says the word Christmas which means it passes the Japanese test. They are also very fond of Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You."
At school I help the kids clean the English room. We usually finish early and one day we found a Christmas CD and put it on. The Mariah Carey song was the first song and four boys and I grabbed markers and started to have a concert. We were singing along and dancing and the girls who were in the class were thoroughly entertained. Suddenly one of the boys ran out of the classroom. I figured that he was just too embarrassed, but he came back a minute later with his friend, whose name is Yu. He got Yu to stand in front of us, so we were all singing and pointing to him saying "all I want for Christmas is Yu".
It was really funny. These are great kids and the reason why I'm going to miss this school when I have to change schools in January.

German Christmas Market

Last week we went to the German Christmas Market in Osaka for the second year in a row. This is basically a traditional German Christmas market set up at the base of a big Osaka office building. It's run by the German Consulate in Osaka, so it's fairly authentic, although the German guy we met recently said it wasn't quite the same. I think both the beer and the mulled wine were below typical German standards. We had fun last year, though, so we headed there again with a couple of friends. Mostly we were excited about the food. We had some sausages, a good ham sandwich, some German potatoes and then some donuts. It was a good time. Last year we brought home the mugs they served the wine and hot chocolate in; this year, we got the new mug, which was shaped like a boot. Good souvenir.
-Jason

Nishinomiya Race

I'm a little late with this, but I ran a 10km race at the beginning of November. It was in Nishinomiya, a city between Kobe and Osaka that is the home of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. In fact, the race started right outside Koshien, the Tigers home stadium and the most historic ballpark in Japan.
I was pretty excited to do the race, because I hadn't run a race in 10 months and I was missing it. Unfortunately, the timing was pretty bad. October and November were very tough months for me training-wise, as it seemed like I was too busy to fit in much running. So having a "comeback" race in the middle of that time period wasn't so hot. Moreover, I had a cold. The day before the race I thought I was getting better. I've raced with colds plenty of times in the past, so I figured it wouldn't affect me in the race. I was wrong, as I could definitely feel my breathing being constricted in the second half of the race. I went on to retain the cold and a cough for another two or three weeks, so it might have been a worse bug than I first thought.
With those factors, it really wasn't a very good race - about two minutes slower than I was at about the same time last year. Nevertheless, I'm happy that I got to race again. I've got three or four more races coming up in the next couple of months, so we'll see how that goes. The first one is next week, so I'm not expecting too much there either - I haven't had time to build up enough training for a really good race yet, I don't think. But perhaps in the New Year I'll be able to see some improvement.
-Jason

Jason's adventure at the post office

I went to the post office last week to mail a package of Christmas presents back to the U.S. Like many other countries, Japan's post office includes a number of services besides mail, like banking and insurance. At the main Himeji branch, one end (with orange paint) is for mail and the other (green) end is for those other services which I don't use.
I parked my bike in front of the window looking in on the green end that day. As I was locking up, I looked in the window and saw a teller with her hands in the air. Odd, I thought. Then I noticed another one, then I noticed the customer with the white shirt had a gun in his hand.
Now this was a bit unexpected. I was outside, on a fairly busy street, and the gun was pointed in the opposite direction (the gunman had his back to me), so it wasn't immediately petrifying, but it was sort of worrisome. I quickly tried to figure out what to do. My first thought was to call the police, but since I can't say "man with gun", "robbery" or "post office" in Japanese, I wasn't sure I would do much good. I also noticed that everyone in the orange end of the office was acting normally. Well, the supervisors were standing at the back watching the robbery, but the tellers and the customers were just going about their business. There was also a bright flashing light, which I first thought was from some alarm, but now saw was the flash from the camera of the guy taking pictures of the robber.
At this point I began to wonder if it was a drill. Still, I wasn't too keen on walking into a building where a man was holding a gun, so I decided to go into the park across the street and wait to see what happened. After a couple of minutes, I could see the robber come into the lobby. He stopped and chatted with a post office employee there for a few minutes. He then went back into the post office. About that time, a policeman came walking around the corner (from where I had been previously). He stopped and chatted with a post office employee out front, then carried on. At this point I figured it was safe, so I went back across the street. The robber was still in the post office, but he'd put the gun away, and it looked like he was having a meeting with the employees in the green end. The orange end continued to function normally. While I locked up my bike, the robber left and the employees proceeded to close the green side of the office. I went in through the other door and mailed the package.
-Jason

Kobe Luminarie

Last Friday night we went to Kobe to see the luminarie with our friend Lauren. We stopped first in Chinatown for dinner. Then we joined the crowd and walked through the maze until we reached the lights. They had barricades set up and it seemed like they were prepared for much larger crowd than was actually there. It was busy, but it wasn't so crowded that it was uncomfortable.
There's a walkway of lights that ends at a park with a big structure that's covered in lights.

ikebana #2

Tonight was my second ikebana (flower arranging) class.
I thought that the arrangement we made the first time had nice balance and structure. I understood the theory about how the different pieces fit together at particular heights and achieved symmetry.
This time, however, I feel like it's more of a hodge-podge. Some of the same rules applied, but I felt like it was much more of a whatever goes approach. This could be the style that the teacher chose this week, or it could be a reflection of how little I know about ikebana. I'm not sure which.
It's a Christmas-themed arrangement, and although I think it's a bit awkward, I do like having the Christmas colors (and smells) in the apartment.
Jason's holding up a towel in the first picture so you can see the flowers without the distracting background of our wall.
The second picture is the view looking down on the flowers.
The third picture is a close-up of one of the interesting flowers that I'd never seen before. My teacher told me the name, but I can't remember it.

koko-en at night

The garden near the castle has a special night-time display this time of year where they illuminate all of the tress with the beautiful changing leaves. We went last Sunday with some of our friends. A few of my favorite views weren't quite as spectacular since you're looking at a the castle covered in scaffolding, but it was a really nice evening and we enjoyed the stroll through the garden.
There are more pictures on the picasa site.

mandolin concert

One of our Japanese friends plays the mandolin and invited us to her concert last weekend. I wasn't even sure what a mandolin was -- it looks a little like a short guitar, but the bowl part is quite a bit deeper. The music was beautiful and we had a really nice afternoon.
While we were waiting for the show to start I was playing with my small camera and discovered a new feature that takes a series of photos in rapid-fire and then composites them into a single image. So I told Jason to make a string of funny faces so we could test it out.

Thanksgiving

There's a restaurant downtown that you can rent out which serves an American-style Thanksgiving every year. Once again our Aussie friend (go figure) organized the event. So we joined about 30 of our friends for a great dinner. They managed to get all of the traditional food and added a few extra "foreign dishes" -- re-fried beans anyone? The one missing piece was pumpkin pie, which they'd replaced with (little-known) traditional chocolate fondue fountain.

fall leaves

I took this one on my way to work Thursday morning.

A new aspiration

This is a real article from the Daily Yomouri (the English newspaper that my Japanese teacher gets every day and shares with me). As I read this, I just kept thinking that it seemed like a fake article that you'd read somewhere like The Onion. But, I assure you it's real.
Blades of glory: World champion barber's tale

Gero Onsen

Last weekend some of our friends organized a bus tour out to a famous onsen town. At first we didn't think that Jason was going to be able to come because he had a group presentation for one of his SJSU classes. But luckily his group picked Friday for their presentation, so he was free to come, too.
Saturday morning all 30 of us piled on our bus and off we went. It was quite a long bus ride, but the organizers planned some games for us to play. For one of the games we were each given something that we had to collect throughout the day. Jason and I had yennies (the Americanized name for one yen coins, which are worth about a penny). My competitive nature came through, and I was on a serious yennie hunt. Some of our friends were supposed to collect receipts, so I grabbed some from a convenience store and tried to sell them for a yennie each. My efforts paid off, and Jason and I were the yennie champions!
On the ride up we stopped at a park that had 3,000 trees, all of which were various shades of red, orange and yellow. We did about a 20 minute walk through the park, which was really beautiful. I enjoyed being in a group with a bunch of other people from Phoenix who were equally impressed by the leaves. Some people don't understand that we just don't have such things in Phoenix.
When we got to Gero we all headed off for the hot springs. The town had many to choose from, but we'd been given a list with some suggestions. In all, we visited four different baths, and they were all really nice ... and hot. Our last stop Saturday night was the free public onsen, which was located on the river bank. Most private onsen are separated, to keep the naked men away from the naked women. This was a mixed onsen, so you were supposed to wear bathing suits (there was a sign that apparently said so in Japanese). Our group followed this sign, but there were some Japanese visitors (of both sexes) who did not. It was an interesting evening.
Our dinner and breakfast were both included in the place where we stayed, so they were both Japanese style. The dinner was good, even if it had a little more seafood than I'd pick for myself (but I sure have come a long way). But I can't do Japanese breakfast. Miso soup and fish just isn't breakfast.
On the ride back we stopped for a boat cruise. The scenery along the river was beautiful with the changing trees and the weather cooperated wonderfully. Plus, we lucked out and were on a really interesting boat. The entire inside was tatami mat. It was quite different and fun.

There are more pictures on the picasa site.

'good food come come'

This week my students were practicing writing about their dreams and what they want to be in the future. Here are some direct quotes from their papers ...

- I want to become a gentle, painful nurse with a smile.
- When I become a wonderful working member of society, I will want to travel around The Japan.
- First, I like coffee. But I always after drinking it, I have a stomachache.
- Fifth, I'm TV talent of one's dreams.
- I want people to be moved by my volleyball.
- I wanted to do it that a butterfly called ordered medicine it thought it was difficult.
- I will make my comic books. For example, gag, a love story.
- I want to make Chinese food shop. Shop name is 'good food come come'.

Some of them obviously typed what they wanted into a translator and as Jason and I have learned, the results aren't always what you actually wanted to say.

Kurashiki

--still catching up--

Jason and I celebrated five years of being together with a day trip to Kurashiki at the end of October. The descriptions we'd read of the town said that it was quaint and a nice place to spend an afternoon. There's a river (canal?) that cuts through town and there are many old, traditional shops and museums along the banks.
It turned out to rain all day, but we put on our ponchos and didn't let it stop us. We still had a very pleasant stroll through town. I always enjoy poking around in old shops and Jason was a good sport to humor me.
On our way home we stopped in Okayama and finally managed to eat at a burger joint that we'd read about. It was our fifth try. Our previous attempts had failed due to bad train connections, bad directions to the restaurant, and the restaurant randomly deciding to close on Tuesdays. But, this time we found it and it was open. The burgers were really delicious. My burger came topped with grilled apples and Jason got one with avocado. Yum.

Tottori

--still catching up -- (almost there!)

While our Czech friends were here we took a day trip out to Tottori. It's on the Japan Sea coast. It's known for its sand dunes. It was truly bizarre. We've seen a range of sceneries in Japan, but the sand dunes around Tottori didn't mesh with any of them. For one thing, there were camels. I can't imagine that they're native creatures. We considered but opted not to go for ride. Although plenty of the Japanese grannies did.
We trekked across the dunes and up the hill and were rewarded with a great view.
I'll put the rest of the pictures on picasa soon.

International Festival

--still catching up--

Once again this year I volunteered as a stage MC at Himeji's International Festival. It wasn't a difficult job, I just had to announce the next act (in English). Jason came to the festival too, but he volunteered at the English booth.
The best part of this festival is the range of food. They organize food booths from countries all over the world. We tried Australian barbecue, Polish meat, Spanish taquitos, Indonesian crepes among others. Yum.

Aboshi Lantern Festival

--still catching up--

We really enjoyed the lantern smashing festival in Aboshi. It was once again a bit jarring to see the beautifully painted lanterns completely destroyed, but the frantic mob is fun to watch. Even though this was the second year that we've gone to this festival, I still really don't understand the point. I'm not sure why they smash the lanterns. That being said, it is my favorite of all of the local festivals.
Our friends from the Czech Republic were here, and it was fun to be able to show them a Japanese festival. We even managed to snag a couple of wayward lanterns for them to take home a souvenirs. They particularly enjoyed all of the men running around in fundoshi (loin cloths) and the wide assortment of (fried) festival food.
Another interesting aspect of the evening was the fact that Jason and I were "famous". We both taught at elementary and junior high schools in the area last year, so every few seconds were were recognized by a group of students and could hear our names being shouted.
There are more pictures on the picasa site.

ikebana

This week I started ikebana (Japanese flower arranging). Some people had told me that it was difficult because there was a lot of math involved, but for me the math wasn't the difficult part. That the height of the secondary piece needs to be 70% of the primary piece, etc., made sense to me. The "making sure it looks right" part was much more difficult.
Anyway, here's my first creation.

Nada Fighting Festival

We just came through festival season again in Himeji. With my schedule, we weren't able to get to all the festivals we went to last year, but we did go back to the Nada Fighting Festival. Last year I spent all day at this festival, but this year we just went in the evening. Although apparently it wasn't on the official program, we felt that the evening portion was the most interesting, so we were content to see that again.
We managed to find some seats on the hill overlooking the main festival site. I think people pay for these seats, but we just found an empty mat. Chelsey asked the people sitting next to it if we could sit there, and they said OK, and so we had seats for the night. We sat down to our dinner of fried festival food and waited for the big shrines to be carried down from the hill. Last year, Chelsey and I ventured down into the main area, but it was quite chaotic and a little scary, so we were happy to stay on the hill this time.
The festival gets its name because groups of men take their portable shrines and crash them into one another, until one group can't hold anymore and the shrines fall to the ground. Then, I presume, the other group is the winner. This year, though, the festival really lived up to its name, as after a couple of shrine clashes, the men decided to keep it going with some fisticuffs. At one point a guy climbed up on a shrine and was aiming kicks at people until he was pulled down. There were police around the area for crowd control, and none of the fights lasted too long, but it was probably good we were well away from that area this year.
-Jason
There are more pictures on the picasa page.

Himeji castle reconstruction

I haven't been updating this as regularly as I'd planned, but here's what the castle looked like on Oct. 16. It's completely covered now. I'll try to get a new picture soon.

Aussie Rules

This year's Grand Final in the Australian Football League ended in a tie for the first time in decades. Apparently, under league rules, if the final ends in a tie they replay the game a week later. This year, that meant some Australians in our building ordered the Internet feed of the replay, so I got to watch the second go-round. (Apparently, if the second game ended in a tie, they would have gone to overtime). I remember seeing Aussie Rules on TSN when I was young, but all I really remember is the six-shooter signal the official makes when a goal is scored. So I think this was the first game I've watched all the way through.
It was quite enjoyable, too, even though it wasn't a classic game. It was between Collingwood and St. Kilda's. Apparently, Collingwood is something like the Yankees of the AFL, except they hadn't won the title since 1990. (Maybe the Maple Leafs are a better example? Big market team that hasn't won in years but nobody likes them anyways?) I was watching with two people from Adelaide. There are two teams from Adelaide, and each of my fellow viewers supports a different Adelaide team, presumably making them rivals. Nevertheless, they were in agreement we should cheer for St. Kilda's.
Unfortunately, Collingwood ran away with it. The tone was set earlier by a hilarious gaffe from the St. Kilda's captain. For NFL fans, it was like Leon Lett's brain cramp in the Super Bowl, if only Lett's play had been the turning point of a tightly-contested game instead of comic relief in his team's blowout win. So anyways, the big team went on to win comfortably and the small team lost the final for the second year in a row.
Before coming here, I would always have described Aussie Rules as "like rugby", a comparison the Australians in the building always disagree with strongly. After watching the game, I see why. While there are superficial similarities to rugby (they use a similar ball, there's tackling and no pads), in strategy the game is much more like hockey or soccer. Players move, unconstrained, all around the field of play, as does the ball, while the point of the game is to propel the ball through a goal - not to maintain possession across a line, as in rugby or American and Canadian football.
Nevertheless, I had fun watching the game. It was also good to watch it with some people who could explain things to me. That part may have been a good learning experience; what if I have a Grey Cup party and have to explain this play?

takoyaki pancake balls

Takoyaki means "octopus grilled" but is usually translated as "octopus balls". They are not the Japanese equivalent of Rocky Mountain oysters, but are actual dough balls that have a piece of octopus meat in the middle. They are tolerable, but not one of my favorite dishes.
Our apartment came with a takoyaki maker that we'd never used. One day I was thinking about it and trying to come up with something to do with it, and I thought of using it to make pancake balls with a blueberry in the middle. I tested them out one morning for breakfast, and they were great! So much so, that now I'm trying to think of other things to make. I pitched the idea of a saltier dough with ham and cheese in the middle to Jason, and he seemed weary. I think he'd rather I try the pancake batter with chocolate in the middle.
Any suggestions?

Shinzaike Festival 2010

We had our second go-around at our neighbourhood festival at the beginning of October. This is the real beginning of our festival season here in Japan. Unfortunately, this year it rained that weekend, so we only had a shortened version of the festival. Blog readers may remember our tales of jostling the shrines from last year. Well, that got excised from the program this year. Instead, we rolled the shrine around the neighbourhood for a couple of hours, picking it up for some solo jostling three or four times. This included once in the parking lot of our building, for some reason. We got Japanese-style lunchboxes, as we did last year, but this year we ate them at our building instead under tents with the rest of the community at the nearby park. We did go back to the park for some kids dancing in the afternoon, but everything seemed shorter and less of a celebration than last year. Darn the rain!
-Jason

There are more pictures on the picasa site.

a tough month

October has been a tough month for me, which is the reason why I haven't updated the blog or picassa for a while. I've had a mystery ailment that the Japanese doctors I've gone to just can't figure out. I've been told that it's the Japanese equivalent to poison oak or that it was an attack by a vicious bug -- either way, it triggered some sort of an allergic reaction. I'm not quite sure that I buy into either of these theories ... but I also don't have a better one to offer. I just know that I have three different-looking types of itchy/painful mess on my legs. Yuck.
It's better now, but the itching and pain was driving me up the wall and the medications they first prescribed didn't help. The second doctor I went to said that the stuff the first doctor prescribed was "kids medicine". Which is really saying something because even adult Japanese meds are weak by American standards.
The second round of meds seems to be helping, and I've got some super-powered stuff on the way from America. So hopefully this will be taken care of soon and then I'll get the blog back up to date.

Orix Buffaloes baseball

At the end of Silver Week (the week following Sports Day) we went to Osaka to catch what was almost certainly our last baseball game of the season. This time we went to the Osaka Dome to see the Buffaloes, Osaka's "other" team. The Buffaloes are Osaka's other team, and were basically out of the playoffs, so I didn't think getting tickets would be a problem. It wasn't; in fact the opposing team seemed to have much better fan support, even though that team was from the Tokyo area. Their fans were impressive, though; their cheers were different from those we heard from the Hanshin and Hiroshima fans. The Chiba fans had a number of different songs to support their players.
Orix's main claim to fame is probably being half of Ichiro's former team (he played for the Orix BlueWave, who merged with the Kintetsu Buffaloes several years ago). They didn't add to their legacy this year, missing out on the playoffs. They lost the game we went to see 6-2.
The Osaka Dome itself is an interesting building, looking something like a spaceship or a flying saucer. We were curious what the infield surface was made of; the basepaths were a funny colour, while there were areas of darker material around each base and on the pitcher's mound. My guess is those areas were dirt, but we weren't sure what the other parts were made of.
-Jason

Okayama

We used one of the days off we got as compensation for sports day to go down to Okayama. It's the next major city to the west of Himeji and we've passed through it several times, but had never really stopped. Its main attraction is its big garden, which is noted as one of the "three great gardens of Japan." That's what we went to visit. It was a very nice, peaceful garden, with surprisingly few visitors. It probably helped that not everyone had the day off work, but I was still surprised at how quiet the garden seemed. The garden is located right on the bank of a river, so there's a stream that flows through the garden and back into the river. It was very nice. It's also directly across the river from Okayama Castle, which looks a little like Himeji Castle but is black instead of white. That's actually its calling card. There are good views of it from a lot of the garden. We enjoyed strolling around. It might be interesting to see it in spring, when more of the flowers would be in bloom.

Lauren's birthday

We helped our Australian friend Lauren celebrate her birthday -- first with a dinner and then at a Japan-themed party. The black and white photo is from the dinner. I think it's a really nice picture of us.
The other picture is from the Japan party. It was a costume party and the rule was that you can to come as something Japanese or from Japan. Jason has become a big fan of sumo and he wanted to go to as a sumo wrestler. The problem is that mawashi (sumo uniform/diaper/loincloth) are very difficult to find. You can't just buy them at the store. I mentioned to one of my teachers that Jason wanted one and she asked around the staff room and the next day there was one sitting on my desk.
Jason found a few websites that told us how to put it on, and I did my best. However, he did choose to wear a pair of underwear underneath since I didn't really know what I was doing and there was some gapping in places where there shouldn't have been.
My costume for the party was a 1oo Yen store. It is basically equivalent to a $1 store in America, except that it seems like you can buy anything there, especially at the big 3-story 100 Yen store downtown. So I bought several things and tied them to hangers that I wore around my neck. All of my merchandise was for sale, and I managed to sell off about half of my costume before the night was over.
There are a few more pictures on the picasa site.

Sports Day 2010

We recently finished this year's Japanese junior high sports day. I watched Chelsey's sports day last year, but this was the first year I was a participant. I got to take part in the race in which one student runs on the backs of all the other students in the class (as they bend over). My job was to help the runner not fall down, as the regular homeroom teacher for that class had hurt her knee. My team won, which I assume was due to the excellent job I did. I was also part of a PTA tug-of-war, which confused me, since I am not a member of the PTA. As a member of the faculty, I ran 200 meters on a relay (the teachers lost badly) and took part in the jump rope. The teachers jumped 21 times, which was respectable, but the ninth-grade winners jumped a school-record 60 times, which they were quite excited about.
It was a fun and interesting day, even if I didn't understand what was going on all the time. There was one event when a group of three students would hoist a fourth student on their shoulders. These squadrons of students would roam around the field, and when they encountered another squadron, the two lifted students would try to grab the other person's hat. It was very entertaining, but I'm not sure what the point was. Oh well.
-Jason

it's a term of endearment

Last fall during our Japanese lessons, we had to give a self introduction which included our name, nationality, job, etc. Remember that this was before Jason had the teaching job, so he introduced himself as a "housewife".
Flash forward to our Japanese lesson last night. We were practicing some vocabulary related to cleaning and I tried to tell our teacher that now I do most of the cleaning, but that last fall when Jason was a housewife that he did the cleaning. Well, our teacher got this horrified look on her face. It turns out that one easily confusable syllable is all that separates the Japanese words for "housewife" and "prostitute".

Waterpark

Wrapping up our summer (still catching up), on the very last day we went to the waterpark in Himeji. We'd seen the park before, as it is right next to the city track and field stadium. But we'd never been there, partially because it's only open in the summer. So this was our last chance to go for the year.
It was fun. There were a lot of kids there, and some of them recognized our friends as their teachers. Neither Chelsey nor I saw any kids from our schools, which is probably because our schools were relatively far away.
The park had a waterslide which was pretty good. Chelsey and I got going quite a bit faster than the Japanese children, I think. There was also a wave pool, but that got so crowded it wasn't as good as it could have been. We spent most of our time in the lazy river, a moving stream of water that you could just float circuits in. It was a good way to finish the summer.
-Jason

Shiraishi again

We spent our last summer weekend (we're a little behind and catching up on our posts) at Shiraishi Island, a place we had also visited in June. There's a villa there that only foreigners can book, so we went with other people from our building ... although, aside from us, it was a completely different group than the first time we went.
We went out there a bit earlier this time, and got luckier with the weather, too. In June, Sunday was a rainy day, causing us to head back home early, but this time both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days. We spent most of both afternoons at the beach, with a lot of time in the water because it was actually pretty hot out. Saturday night we had a barbeque at the restaurant on the beach. It was a great night for it; it had cooled off after the sun went down and it was quite pleasant sitting out near the water. It made for a really nice end to summer.
-Jason

it's a first

For the first time ever
I bought seafood at the store
and cooked it for us.

Who would've thought?

*Jason pointed out that my sentence in fact forms a haiku. Seafood and haiku -- my year in Japan is starting to show.

Nagoya

On our way home from Hakone we stopped by Nagoya, Japan's third-biggest metro area (after Tokyo and Osaka). I'm sure there's lots of interesting things to do in Nagoya, but we didn't do many of them. It was more of a practical trip for us. The main reason we stopped was so I could visit the Canadian consulate to renew my passport. We did that. We also did some shoe shopping. Those were the main highlights of our day-plus there. Of course, it wasn't entirely our fault. The local baseball team was playing in Tokyo, the robot museum was closed and so was the aquarium. (As an aside, that's now three aquariums in Japan that have been closed when we could have visited). We did run by Nagoya Castle, which is a lot shorter than Himeji Castle. It does have its own charm as well as a nice dirt running path. It also lacks the construction girders that currently grace Himeji's version.
-Jason

Hakone transportation

Here's a sampling of the various transportation that we used to get around Hakone.

Hakone

After we finished climbing Mt. Fuji, we headed to the resort area of Hakone to rest for the weekend. Hakone is a mountain area about 100 km from Tokyo - so an easy daytrip from that city. As we discovered, being a popular daytrip destination means that business hours often end when the daytrippers go home. There's not much open after about 6 p.m.
Chelsey had found a good deal on a nice hotel right by the edge of Lake Ashi, the main lake in the area. From our window we could see the loading dock for the pirate ships that cross the lake. One of Hakone's big attractions is the abundance of onsen, or hot springs. Since it was the middle of summer, we didn't feel the need to try one of the big ones, but I did go down to the small one in our hotel at night to soak and recover from the hike.
We used our days to tour around the area. We took the pirate ship across the lake. In tourist materials there are lots of nice pictures of the lake with Mt. Fuji in the background. We never saw Mt. Fuji at any point on our trip. I think Chelsey did get some nice pictures of the clouds where we think Mt. Fuji was supposed to be.
On the first day we stopped by the "Boiling Valley", an area with a lot of sulfuric hot springs. You could see the steam rising out of the side of the mountain as we rode the ropeway up to it. We went to walk around the area, but the sulfur smell was a bit strong for Chelsey, so I had to investigate and report back to her. The other special attraction of the area was the black egg: eggs that had been hard-boiled in the sulfur water, which apparently makes the shells turn black. You could buy packs of five practically straight out of the pools. Like the pools themselves, it was up to me to try and then report on the experience. They didn't taste much different than regular hard-boiled eggs to me.
We also stopped at the Hakone Open Air Museum, which was a pretty interesting concept for a museum. It's an art museum, but most of the pieces are installations in what was essentially a garden. It made for a nice and interesting stroll, at any rate. Unfortunately, a couple of the interactive exhibits were kid-only. We can't figure out why kids get to have all the fun.
The next day we rode the pirate ship and the ropeway again before jumping on a train line. It was supposed to be a spectacular train ride, but it was a bit underwhelming. There was some nice scenery as we rode above a valley, but that was about it. We ended in the largest town in the area, Odawara, as we figured it would be easier to find an open restaurant there than in the evening ghost town that surrounded our hotel. So we found a pretty good and cheap Italian place, then caught a bus back to the hotel.
On our last morning there I took Chelsey to the Hakone Ekiden museum. An ekiden is a long-distance relay race, a format that is quite popular in Japan. The Hakone Ekiden is the most popular of these races. It's contested between universities from the Tokyo area and is held on Jan. 2-3, with national television coverage. Each team has 10 runners, each of whom runs about a half marathon. The first day goes from Tokyo to Hakone, then the second day they run back. Taking Chelsey to a museum about a race she knows little about, with exhibits in a language she doesn't read, probably doesn't rank high on the list of romantic things I've done ... but I think it still beat the Paris sewers.
-Jason
The rest of the Hakone pictures are on the picasa site.