and somehow, it's still raining...

Hey, a couple of hours after writing that post things aren't looking so down.

It's probably okay that I'm not that excited about what I said I would do. I somehow wanted to do some sort of amazing job, but it's occurred to me that it will be okay if I just do fine, as long as I put some sort of decent effort into it.

I don't think the speech is such a big deal either. As soon as I think up a topic I can identify more easily with, I'll write it, because the theme that was picked for the speeches seemed really broad to me, and somehow rubbed me the wrong way.

Huh. What seemed so important to write about earlier today doesn't seem so important now. Go figure. (^~^)b

Finally something, if only rain

I've been waiting and my day still hasn't come. Sometimes it does that and I can't predict when it will arrive. Sometimes I completely skip it. I don't like it when that happens. Sure, that saves discomfort and hassle, but I like when it's on time because it helps me keep track of my moods. When I don't get it(two weeks late) I don't know what to expect. I usually feel cloudy and zapped for energy, like today.

I'm considering telling them that I don't want to participate in the speech presentation this weekend. I don't have a damn topic, and I hate the topic of 'Your Life in Japan.' For freak's sake, that's like saying 'write about the past 4 years of your life.' And I'm tired of talking about all the differences in the cultures. I'm tired of talking about the similarities even. I just want to be left alone, to tell you the truth. I don't want to be constantly reminded that I am a foreigner. I don't know what difference it makes. I just want to live in peace, without being reminded (again) how different I am.

And I'm also having trouble looking forward to the cultural classes I was asked to teach(volunteer for) this and next week. I did it because someone asked me to. I had wanted to volunteer (finally) at the orphanage to tell you the truth! I don't want to talk about Colorado again and explain why English is important. I didn't even grow up in Colorado! I don't even care that much about Colorado or even about English!!

I had a nightmare last night. I dreamed that a plague had killed 6 people in Texas, and many people thought it was the beginning of the plague that was going to wipe out humankind. I hoped that because Jmom, Jdad, and I lived so far from Texas that we'd be safe. I woke up, washed my face, went to the bathroom and looked at the clock. It was 4am. I swear I will never eat chocolate cake before bed again. Every time I totally have nightmares.

Earlier this year I formed a crush on one of my good friends. I really, really liked him, but as much as I could see, he was totally blind to it. You know what, it was okay with me. I just had to deal with the fact that he wasn't going to reciprocate, and then we could be around each other as much as I liked (^u^). It was so great. He inspired my Japanese study so much, because he himself was on fire about Japanese. And he had a billion friends, and when we all got together those were some of the best times of my life. Well, I--courageously--did have a friend of mine finally tell him, two weeks before he left Japan. Turns out he wasn't into me after all, but he liked another of our mutual friends. Whatever. It was still amazing.

Right now I don't have much more to say, except that it's raining here, and it's been raining all day.

Psyched by Results

I just took an online test for the second level Japanese Proficiency test, the test I'll be taking later this year. It's the same online test I took a few months ago before I started studying. It's not a comprehensive test, but it covers kanji, grammar, and vocab. Anyway, last time when I took it I got something like a 47%. Today, I got a 61%. On this test, 60% is passing. This is the first positive sign that I may actually have a chance. Woo hoo!! Wish me luck!

Light Holes

Pre-Hollywood Garfield the Cat once said 'I'm not sleeping. I'm checking my eyelids for light holes.'

My blog looks kind of dark and shadowy, don't you think? Or like it lurks in deep sea waters? Sometimes that's how I feel, as if I move through life in shadows, as if not to be noticed too much. It could be my nature, it could be my allergy to sunlight(joke joke), however, on occasion, I do make an appearance at stage center. Sunday was one of those occasions.

My good friend Etsuko, whose name has not been changed for your amusement, goes to great lengths to give me the treatment reserved in the most part, only for beloved family. This makes sense, seeing as I call her my 'Japanese mother' and me her 'American daughter.'

So she got together a group of her most musical friends and asked them to learn a piece of music to perform with me. We consulted and made flyers, she rented a hall, her friend gathered a sound crew, and we put on a concert last Sunday. She called it 'Celebrating the Pure Joy of Music,' and she herself, just a beginning piano player, learned a piece to perform as the finale sing-along.

This concert, she told me, was to honor me and the 4 years I've spent here in this area. I'll tell you, sometimes I have a hard time looking so directly at bright lights, in this case, it's very hard to accept that people truly wanted to do something to honor what I'd done. Actually, and I'm not even being modest, I haven't really done all that much which has been very significant here, I don't think.

So I couldn't really think of the concert in that way. I emphasized it as a bunch of people I know and care about coming together to listen to and enjoy something that I also love, music. It certainly wasn't a professional production, but it was somehow a very singularly joyous occasion in my life. Through the music, I got to give something to all those people that I feel give me so much. We anticipated 50 people to show, 60 tops, but the final count was 77. Not just my friends, of course, but many more friends than we imagined. (Etsuko had made gifts for the first 50 guests--hand-sewn cloth chopstick carrying pouches)

I played in 6 pieces: two classical, two traditional Japanese(with koto!), a sing-a-long, and a Japanese pop cheesy feel-good song that made me feel good and cheesy.
There were 14 pieces total, and everyone made a good effort at their own various levels.

When we finished, I played a technically challenging piece as an encore. When I was done, I was showered with more bouquets of flowers than I could hold. I recommend the experience. I was sure to see that Etsuko got her flower showers too. I told her that she is one of the best examples in my life of how to be a great and kind person.

It strikes me that I was nervous in the morning, but not once the concert started, like not at all. And that I really got into the music. And that I didn't really make mistakes(well... not that I think other people actually noticed...). It was a different kind of thing for me. It's just not that often I get to be in my element, confident, and surrounded by people I know.

I'm surprised that I've gotten these kinds of chances, but I live in a small town on a small island. In their own way, everyone has something to offer here...

Thanks to a most wonderful friend, Etsuko, for making these wonderful memories with and for me.

Happy Day

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. A friend is in visiting from the U.S., and we went to Kyoto for a day, where I introduced her to some of my friends with whom she is staying now. I also spent a day by myself in Nagano to look at a school for music up there.

Also, I'm preparing for a concert in which I'll play some violin music and also an Aikido demonstration next month. On Sunday, I gave a speech to the International Society of Ariake and played some violin. I'm stretched a little thin, but you know what, I'm not stressed at all. I'm learning how to deal with things as they come, rather than stress over all the things I've got to do. It's a great feeling.

Finding a Calling

I never meant to let it go this long. I mean, my life is consumed by tasks such as these.

Sincerely, I've tried and failed to post many times, ignoring my computer's state of health. It's time to admit I've let my resistance to getting it fixed go on for too long, way too long. It's like, a "thing" now. Like something that I've actually avoided doing. What a sucky, adversive way to go about dealing with problems.

I realize as time goes by that there really aren't that many chances in life to really take chances, so to speak. Most of the time, I don't know about you, but my life is spent taking care of things in a kind of perpetual motion of errands, obligations, and distractions, usually a kind of 'catch-up' for things I'd meant to do, meant to watch, meant to write, meant to get fixed, etc.

Living in this way, it never feels quite satisfying because once one thing is finished, there's already something else nagging to get done. Will the endless tasks ever get done, will I ever fully embrace my infinite, scattered interests?

I don't think it's possible to do it all or finish it all; I've finally decided that. Plus, I've made too much a mess of the things I've already started by doing them half-heartedly...

Going through daily motions, taking care of things, taking care of obligations, pulling weeds and nurturing buds and watering flowers in the little garden that's grown up around me in life takes all my time. And I'm still not even very good at it! The so-called 'garden' looks so random, as if there isn't any focus.

So what can I do? Whittle down my interests? Stop taking care of things? No, that's not what I think, and you? I think that if there is something, a calling to be heard, a focus to be found or created, and if all these daily life things are being tended to, it will be much easier to recognize.

I pray that I can see it clearly when it's close at hand. That all the time spent getting myself together will have been some use in some way.

I wonder if love is growing me in its garden?? Please, can I bloom?

Elevated to 'Cute' Status

This just in: I have been upped in status by one of my first-year(10th grade) classes. My promotion began with one student, a trumpet player in band, who, upon my entering the classroom at cleaning time would announce, "Julie's so cute!!" In English terms, this is effectively saying, "Julie is cooler beyond words. How does she do it?!" Gradually, one by one, the other students began to take her lead, and it came to the point where I was walking out of the classroom last week and I heard a chorus of "Cute!!!"s follows by heavy sighs. Honestly, I'm not sure what I did to be granted the honor. But I shall bask now in the glory of cuteness-supreme, and do my best not to show my lack of understanding. Cleaning with the first-graders has now become a perk of the job!

Peaches, Hollywood and a nice hot bath

Was at the hot spring near my house last night when we ran into Furu-san from Aikido. It's always humorous to see someone outside the context you regularly see them in. We tossed a few jokes back and forth and then he smiled. He's got this great warm smile that makes you feel like a kid, and then a million bucks and then a beer. Well, maybe in my case a plum wine cooler.

Then, Peaches and I went and took our baths. Japanese hot springs are heavenly. I mean, they're nothing like I could've imagined before I moved practically right next to one. For starters, all the ladies are naked along with you, and nobody looks at you. They don't even look at me, and I look different from all of them (because I'm all-western like, you see)! So there's no awkwardness. So you go in, wash off, and then just stroll around until you find a pool you feel like soaking in. Most bath houses have four or five pools, a cold plunge, and a sauna.

Yesterday I went to the outdoor spring first. The stars were out and the steam was rising like a hazy mist from the water. And I just enjoyed being legally, publicly naked--bare-bodied and free. And both Peaches and I smelled like sulphur for the rest of the night.

Peaches and I have been spending a lot of time together since the Hokkaido trip. We started an exercise regime together, and she's started coming to Aikido classes. We also learn calligraphy together. Good thing I like Peaches and she likes me because we see each other way too much now.

I've also been hanging out with Shaggy a lot, whose name is no longer Shaggy, but Hollywood. Oh, and I've been reading Catch-22; can you tell ;-P ??

Hollywood and I get along famously as well. In fact, I'm kind of smitten with his boyish charm. But most people are, I think. He's one of the most easy-going people I know, and everybody seems to be pretty fond of Hollywood. He has a knack for blurting out some totally spectacular observation about the topic of conversation(quite loudly and unselfconsciously, which is charming in itself), simultaneously remembering something like that he left his car door wide open in the middle of the street. Typically we hear something like, "That was contrasted in two different essays I read last week. The tatemae and the honne are absolutely two sides of the same coin. Oh, F!*&in s####%!, I'll be right back! Oh, man!!"

I suppose this is a continuation of the Friends Project, in which I vowed to make a truck-load of friends this year. And what are friends for but to be made, I always say. Except of course that this is the first time I've said it.
Have a good weekend!!

Not-o Natto??!!

Valentine's Day. A day of showing heartfelt love and appreciation, of giving home-made cookies, and if you are lucky enough, receiving as well...

Messiah, who works for the natto company, for reasons beyond my utter comprehension, unloaded a whole box load of the foul-smelling, indeed, yummy-tasting stuff into my fridge on February the 14th. I couldn't eat this much natto in a whole month, and I even like the stuff!!


from www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/jnatto.html :

Natto is fermented soy beans. The beans are boiled, wrapped in straw and left to ferment for several days. They have vitamins, fiber and protein and thus are a good source of nutrition.

Natto dates back at least 1000 years and eventually became a favorite of people living in Edo, the capital city of Japan at that time.

People sold natto basically door-to-door. Some people added it to miso, others added minced onions and soy sauce and then poured the entire sum over some hot rice. It's cheap and has a rather strong odor.

Natto is sometimes used as a breakfast food, mixed with beaten raw egg and soy sauce, then poured over steaming hot rice. Natto is definitely not a favorite of non-Japanese, though, and even many Japanese do not care for it.

Thrills Up North

More and more memories keep flooding my head from last week's Hokkaido trip. I was in Sapporo for three nights, and Abashiri, on the north-eastern coast, for two.

Like I'd almost forgotten how on the first night, after arriving in Sapporo, my traveling buddy, we'll call her Peaches, really wanted to have some nabe for dinner. 'Nabe' in English translates to 'pot,' and in this context it means various Japanese veggies and fishes boiled and served straight from a big pot. I thought it sounded good, so we looked for a place to go. After a while of walking around and getting really hungry, I finally asked two men wearing business suits standing in front of a restaurant if they knew a good place to eat nabe. As if it was their own personal mission, they started searching around, even calling up to one of the restaurants on sign to see if they served it. Finally, one of the guys goes 'doh!' and that he's knows a place just a block down, on the other side of where we were. And just to be sure we made it there, he walked us all the way there.

Those two crabs are going to stick with me for a long time too. In both Sapporo and Abashiri we stayed in youth hostels, which was a first for me. I didn't really know what to expect, so I didn't have much expectation. The hostel in Sapporo wasn't so much to speak of. The hosts gave us our sheets and told us our room numbers. We met some American girls who were JETs in Kyoto there. The beds were lumpy and the heater was turned up so high I sweat through my pjs. But the hostel in Abashiri was completely different. It was more like a B&B. They took us to a snowy hot spring at night, the guests were friendly and chatty(we were the only non-Japanese, btw, except for this kid Tony, who was half-Japanese, half-New Zealander) and they offered home-cooked breakfasts and dinners. The dinners are what I would like to talk about right now.
On the first night, we had crab legs. These were beautiful, meaty, and delicious. They were served with the most delicate-looking scallops I've even seen.






This was served with salmon rice, curry, and several small side items like spinach in a peanut dressing.



The second night, we signed up to have dinner again, and to my utter delight, and slight wooziness, we were served this 'hairy crab':


Mine had so much meat I just kept on eating more and more, and it was absolutely delicious. I petted the crab's shell. It was fuzzy, like a big fuzzy spider. Ick. But yum. It was served with crab rice, and several other side items too. Both of these meals, amazingly enough were about (US) $13. I noticed a little later on when we went to some food stands downtown that each of these crabs on its own, for a whole crab(we ate half crabs) were around $35-$50.

Snow-mobiling has to be one of the most fun things to do on the entire planet. But let me start with what we did on our fifth morning--something myseriously entitled 'Naturing.' If you don't know what that is, you are in the same boat as Peaches and I were that morning when we got to a frozen-looking ocean and got handed wetsuits. Turns out naturing means going out to play around on drifting ice blocks and floating leisurely around out off the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk One of the highlights was that Tony found this little creature with his see-through bucket called a clione . They are shell-less, tiny little floaty things that bear a striking resemblance to, of all things, angels. And they live in, of all places, freezing cold water. Peaches and Tony spent a long time watching the little thing flap its angelic wings, while I lay on my belly, face 2 inches from the freezing depths, looking for more. Didn't find any more though.

Then we went ice fishing. Well, -they- went ice fishing while Peaches and I watched. Then we went over to the look at snow sculptures at a nearby festival site. This is all taking place in Abashiri, remember, not Sapporo. Sapporo had its own huge festival going on too, but hopefully I'll get to that later. At the little site in Abashiri, we saw some snow mobiles and also some snow rafts. Since we'd tried snow rafting already back in Sato Land in Sapporo, we thought we'd like to try snow mobiling. So we bought our tickets and went out to the snow mobiles. There was no line, and the guys signaled that we didn't need helmets, so we just went right up to them. The guy told me to sit down, so I did, leaving room at the front for him to sit. But then he motioned for me to move to the front and for Peaches to scooch in behind me, which surprised us both. He gave me a 20-second tutorial on how to work the thing, and then he left!! So I'm sitting there in the front grinning ear to ear. And poor Peaches grabs me and hangs on for dear life. I comment to her that they have no idea what they just did, pump the gas once and shoot off down the course at full speed. And my heart was pounding from the thrill of that trip until late into the evening.

Yes!! I want to write more about this trip!

We Get What we Deserve

Shaggy left me a message saying "Did you get yours??" and I had to think because I hadn't gotten anything. But I looked again, and there, buried in the bottom of the plastic orange wanna-be mailbox was the cheap waxy papered postcard I've been waiting for since December 2nd of last year. For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting the results of my Japanese 3rd Level Language Proficiency Test (as I have), they came today.

Here's the breakdown:

Writing/Vocab: 96/100
Listening: 83/100
Reading/Grammar: 176/200

Total Score 355/400
Passing percentage: 60%
My percentage: 89%

WooWeeee! I'm so psyched!!! My goal was a 90%, and I came thiiiiis close! I studied so hard and it took so much effort but I passed and got decent score. Of course, I'm aiming for even higher for next time, but for now, I really couldn't be happier.

For comparison's sake, last year I scored a 94% on the 4th level test.

I leave for Hokkaido tomorrow on a 6-day trip to go to the Snow Festival and do some other cool stuff. Report and photos to come...

A Day in the Life as an Assistant English Teacher

Uh, lemme see... Last weekend on Saturday night, I went to an Aikido yudansha seminar, which means that only people above a certain ranking are invited to attend. The practice revolved around variations of ikkyo 'first' technique, and Sensei promised to move through variations on many other basic Aikido techniques as we went through the year. The seminars are held every two months.

As for my progress in Aikido since I joined this group last March, well, I've made definite progress in some areas. My back rolls are becoming natural and smoother. I'm very quick getting up, and I've memorized many of the progressions of techniques that we do, including the basic long form with the jo(short staff), and some of the shorter bokken forms. But in many ways, I still feel quite weak, in some of the same areas I had weakness before I joined. I will keep those areas to myself in case we ever meet, because then you would know exactly how to kill me. No, ha ha, I'm just kidding. One area I have trouble in is that I often confuse my right and left. We generally follow the example showed by the teacher, and many times I will stand up to practice the technique with my partner and start with the opposite hand the teacher showed, or from the opposite stance, etc. This happened a lot even when I trained in Colorado. One teacher in particular would patiently repeat, "That's a fine technique, but the one we're doing right now looks like this..." I even pay special attention sometimes and still do something different, often opposite. Physical dislexia, if you will.

Okay, on to another topic. What I do at work these days(did it ever change?): Well, you'd all be proud to know that I plan on continuing my on-time streak(28 days and counting), but after I get to work, what do I do?

I have anywhere from 1-5 classes these days, and so first I plan for those. That is, after the morning meeting where we all stand up, bow to the principal and say "Good Morning" really loudly, have the morning meeting, and then meetings by grade. After that, I usually go get my mug from the kitchen and have some breakfast mix, followed by either some green tea or steaming hot water. THEN, I plan the lessons out for the day. Usually, I've already finished the plan for most of the lessons before the morning, so after that I sit and wait for class to start. If I have class, I consult with the teacher I'll be team-teaching with and grab the stuff we need and head for the classroom.

I teach one class by myself, which also happens to be my favorite class. It's called Advanced World Culture, and I teach all sorts of cool things about other cultures. The students choose a country (besides the US, because I'm from there) and do special research on it to make a poster. Their final posters are due tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it a lot.

That class aside, most of the other classes use this book called Marathon Mouth, which is the textbook I picked for last year. One class uses My Passport 2, a really great text that prepares students for traveling abroad, which I also picked out. It's just my opinion, but most of the students don't seem to know that the textbooks they are using are special because they are non-government issued textbooks. I'm not sure many of them care at all because I don't think the majority take English Conversation class seriously. Which is too bad for me because with the exception of 2 classes, English conversation is all I teach. These days, I find most classes to be humdrum, with 3 students at most actually excited about learning.

So then I return to my desk and choose which activity I'd like to fill my time with. Generally, I start with kanji because I can stay awake better if I do them in the morning. I'm learning several kanji a day, of course, because I've resolved to pass the next level Japanese test at the end of the year and there are a lot of kanji I have to know. To supplement that, as I said in the last post, I started calligraphy lessons 3 weeks ago. Those are going well.

Then I study grammar and vocab. It's still hard, but I really enjoy it. This learning is slow for me. I'm at an intermediate level now, even after all this time. I suppose I would do best to be patient with myself! Then I read surprise, a kanji book. I was reading Eat, Pray, Love, but I finished it last week, and the kanji book was right there.

I also got some stuff for my Nintendo DS, which is a rocking game system. I basically use it as my electronic dictionary becuse it's AWESOME, but I have a 'game' now where you can trace poetry and other Japanese texts. It might seem like I'm getting carried away with all this kanji and writing and stuff, but trust me, I'm only doing what it's gonna take to be able to read it eventually. It's super hard, yo!!

The other 'game' I got is from this manga comic that I found here. I only like one manga, as far as I can tell, and it's this one bout this cook and his friends and all the situations they get into having to make food for people. It might sound silly, but it just resonated with me somehow. Oh, check that. I like two manga. The other one is Doraeman, the cat-like robot from the future. But that's mainly cause I can read it. It's for kids. This other one is for anybody. Back to the game, it's a whole recipe book which actually tells you step by step how to make all the dishes from the comic, tells you how to prepare stuff, etc. etc., and get this, it actually times you to see if you can make it in the suggested time limit. All the pics are photos and there are also drawings from the comic, including what number in the series the recipe is located in. And I don't even cook!!!!

Okay, well, for myself I do.

I haven't really been interested in getting any so-called 'real' games yet. I love the 'reality games.'

So I've been doing those things at work too. Then I check email and write people. Already 4 people are making noises about visiting in the spring. I can hardly wait til the cold is over and it gets warm again. Been keeping my hands warm, btw. No frostbite for me this year. No sir.

Finally, I often have a little nap after lunch. Many of the teacher take little snoozes a their desks, which is possibly unthinkable in most jobs in the US. But since everyone works so hard around here(it's all relative), I think people just assume whoever it is must need the extra sleep. I don't, but if I don't have something else to do I get sleepy.


It's not hard to find a cat-napper on any given day!

Then, before I know it, it's 3:20pm and it's time to clean the school. All this year, I've been cleaning with the 1st class of 10th graders. We move all the chairs to one side of the room, sweep the floors, wipe down the floors, move the chairs to the other side of the room, sweep, wipe, and put the chairs back. No janitors in these schools. Everybody shares the responsibility of keeping the schools clean.

Sometimes, instead of that, I'll clean my fish tank. I recently got 3 more goldfish from the Naked Man festival. I took video of the festival this time so you would actually believe how crazy nuts I tell you it is, but you also know that I don't know how to put videos on here, so gosh, that's just gonna have to wait. The fish came from one of the vending booths at the festival. My friend Brian won them for me, and he named them too: Ago, Higo, and Yugo. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. They were not amused.

When I hear the 5o'clock chimes, I know I'm free to go. But I often stay til around six to make sure lessons are ready for the next day.

Sometimes, on the way home, the little old lady who lives next to the school will see me hurrying by and call me over to her large garden. She'll share the days news about a half a dozen failed daikon radishes and show me the moth holes, or tell me about how it is getting old. Today, she had come from the dentist and they had to take out several of her teeth. So she talked to me from behind a gauze mouth-mask, saying 'I was too embarrassed to go around without any teeth while they make my new ones." I returned home with more broccoli than one person can eat without turning green and sprouting a 'fro.

Keep Going

I typed about half an hour yesterday about the Mt. Fuji trip before my computer crashed and I lost everything even though it was saved. I'm not really interested in this mac anymore, but it's the only computer on which I can write this blog. Since computers aren't my speciality and I don't want to send it away to get it fixed, I'll just keep on plodding and posting when the winds are favorable.

I got elected as the MVP of my Aikido school this year. I received a beautiful certificate and was asked to give a speech last Sunday at the New Year's party. I wrote the speech by myself, and then Etsuko helped me put the thing into formal Japanese. It was so fun, and I was so excited on the way over to the party. It was a pretty fancy affair, and for me, it was the first time I've been formally acknowledged for anything besides my work contract at school. I gave my speech, and we all ate and drank to our heart's delight. Afterwards, 10 of us headed towards a nearby karaoke bar.

Karaoke, although I adore it, is not my particular speciality. I want to sing and sound like everyone else; somehow, they all seem to have perfect pitch and lovely vibratos. And 8 of these 10 of us were men. When my voice comes out, for example, as I sing Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" or Dido's "Thank You," I want to sound, well, like Eric Clapton or Dido, just like the others sound like the original singers of their songs--even their English pronunciation in right on, though not a one of them speaks English. But alas, I just sound pretty regular and like I'm trying a little too hard. Karaoke is a Japanese cultural tradition, since 1963. Before that time, no one here could sing. But now people are forced to do it from the time they put on their first business suit, so they have no choice but to become really spectacular at it. As for me, I think all those guys were looking at me, wanting Dido's voice to come out of my untrained lungs so they could praise me and clap along. But when it was my own, uh..., smurfy voice that surfaced, it was all they could do to... praise me and clap along, really well-intentioned-like. Gosh, this is a nice place.

I know you're wondering about my speech. I would be too, except that I wrote it. I spoke about how quickly the time has passed and how I was honored that I could earn this award having joined the group less than a year ago. I spoke about (and I kid not) the undiluted joy I felt when we all met for the first time off the mat at the 'hanami' cherry-blossom viewing party in March.

I recalled the trip with Katsuki, Kato and Sensei to Yakushima Island last May. I congratulated Sensei and some others on their decision to come to Aikido Camp in the US this July. I welcomed the new students and wished them good luck. I thanked Furu-san for his endless help and patience. I thanked Sensei for his devotion to us, and his dedication to maintaining the heart of O'Sensei's Aikido. Lastly, I told everyone that I was so happy to accept the title of MVP for 2007. Through training, particularly falling down and getting up over and over again, I am taught how to overcome obstacles and find a spirit which perserveres. I told them to throw me a lot, as much they like after this(everyone laughed). Then I thanked the group for allowing me to speak.

Sigh... a real moment in my life.

Afterwards, my friend Shaggy was having his 24th birthday party in the city, so I joined up. I'm starting to fall in love with this particular group of friends. I told you about some of them already, but mix in a couple of us from the West with this group from the East, and there's a certain green with silver sparkles firework that goes off. We're talking fun, fun, fun, until my Daddy took the Daihatsu away. (Thanks to my brother for sending me off last summer with CDs of the Beach Boys. I'm still trying to decide what I think of one of the other ones, 'Bad Plus,' btw. Any opinions, let me know.)

Today, I taught Joe English. His name is 城, so we call him Joe. He's an awesomely enthusiastic student. And this week, he brought me organic Camomile tea, which we drank during the lesson. Last week, he brought me a bottle of sake, which we... uh... And he brought beer the week before. Um, okay, you're starting to understand why Joe is an interesting student. I've known him for almost three years, longer than I've known most of the foreign language teachers around here. He's a crazy and charasmatic 23ish-year old with two girlfriends(uh, what?) and a knack for JENGA. I'll tell him how to say a word in English, like say, "relative," and he'll do a cartwheel and refill my sake cup. He puts the 'Joe' in 'mojoe,' I'm sure(but to be safe, I'll say that I wouldn't personally know).

And I went hiking last Saturday with Ike. We went to collect huge logs of firewood from this shrine deep in the forest so his friend could make Buddhist statues out of them. It was a 'kapa' shrine; this half-turtle, half-friar, demi-god's shrine. His friend made incantations and we poured two huge bottles of sake into the mouth of the resident dragon-guardian statue. I think this statue only gets visitors on special wood-taking ceremony days like that day. We had to pulley some of the larger logs up the hills back to the car because none of other big, burly Ike-like men could lift them. Ike actually isn't burly, but whatever. It was so amusing being a part of the whole thing, and afterwards we relaxed at some natural hot springs.

And I started Japanese calligraphy lessons last week!! Yay, it's going to be great!!!


I dunno. I'm always doing stuff and getting into stuff, but I hadn't been writing about it. I needed a break for a while, I suppose. Things change so fast. I needed to catch up to all the changes, maybe.

Well, it's the start of a new year, and, having put a good four months between today and my previous post, I can't think of better time to start fresh. Of course, New Year's is already over here, and probably where you are too. But you're probably still dreaming about Mt. Fuji or eggplants or something like that if you are from the good ol' West where it's about 3 am.

Which brings me to today's topic. It is said here in Japan that the three luckiest things you can dream of on New Year's Eve, from lucky to luckiest are 1. an eggplant, 2. a hawk, and 3. Mt. Fuji.

Would it count as lucky if you were actually at Mt. Fuji, but unable to sleep?

That's where I was, basically unsuccessfully trying to catch some z's on an overnight bus to Fuji. I made these (in restrospect, odd) plans to travel with my Aikido teacher to Tokyo and Mt. Fuji for the New Year. Let me say, right off the bat, that my teacher and I did not make ideal traveling companions. He's my teacher, so there's this teacher-student relationship thing, which had me carrying his luggage and opening doors for him and so on, and on top of that a rather large generation gap, which had him trying to buy my meals and looking with fascination at my Nintendo DS(used for translation purposes only, I swear!!). At times, this awkwardness left me futzing with my Rubik's Cube or feeling slightly devastated when my cell phone ran out of batteries. But all in all, it made for a more interesting trip, if anything. I found my smile eating fish liver, or bathing with about 50 other naked ladies within view of Fuji.

Among other things, we went to the Aiki Shrine in Iwama, Honbu Dojo in Tokyo(the headquarters of the largest branch of Aikido in the world), this neat little town called Yanaka just outside of Tokyo (now my official 'I want to live here' town), and of course, to Mt. Fuji to watch the first sunrise of the 2008.

First thing after arriving, we left our stuff off at the hotel and went out to Iwama to find the Aiki Shrine.


to be continued...