June: yep, still working on June

 Where has the summer gone?

Between a visit from Heather and Sue, adopting a sick kitten, a Fire and Violence festival, Minnesota, and a road trip to Hokkaido, this summer has disappeared with alarming speed.  I'm one month into my second (and last) year in Japan and already struggling to silence the parenthetical (and last)'s that my brain is adding on to every moment.  My last rice harvest, my last Uchinada beach welcome party, my last "natsu yasumi" spent trying to look busy for days on end.  That said, all of this (and last)-ing is giving me the necessary motivation to get out and do things.  I'm making my Japan Bucket List, and it's fun.

Last week we checked Hokkaido off the list, and next weekend Katy and Karen and I are planning (well, "planning" may not be the most accurate verb) a trip to Metamorphose, a massive electronic music festival held somewhere near Mt. Fuji... we think.

Before I get caught up in planning future adventures (if I plan them all now, what will I do all day at school tomorrow?), let me try to catch up on the ones that already passed.

So remember the impossibly adorable orphans?  Yep?  Okay, that was Sunday, June 12th, and on our way home we had a little adventure and found a gorgeous campground nestled in the mountains down south.  The photos are from our afternoon.

But to continue on with the epic saga that was June 2010, let's go to Tuesday, June 15th: the arrival of Heather and Suzie.  They arrived having traveled more than halfway around the world for no apparent reason except that O'Hare Airport cannot be trusted.  After some trouble with their flight from Minnesota to Chicago, they eventually got there on a different flight, only to be sent to LA, then paris, and FINALLY to Tokyo where, having missed their night bus, they had to arrange alternate transportation having just arrived in Japan after, what I can only imagine, was precious little decent sleep.

Oy.

Though they were in remarkably high spirits, after showers and present-giving (Christmas in June, anyone?  Thank you, April and Chopper, for raising daughters who were willing to share the crazy-delicious cookies and jerky you sent with them!) they were asleep before their heads hit the pillows.

They spent Wednesday and Thursday exploring the city, and Friday they came to visit my school.  And the new reigning champions in the category of "Most Distracting Visitors" are Heather and Suzie!!!!  Good Lord, I mean, I thought my family with our combined height and Joe's "kakoi mufura" (cool muffler/scarf) was pretty distracting. 

Then Adriana and Evan came to visit.  I had clearly underestimated the distraction factor that a real live couple might have.

But that is all a distant memory as, even now, the H&S related shrieks echo in my ears.  It was all based on the sheer Kawaiiiiiii Factor... until they asked Suzie if she had a boyfriend.  She does.  And does she have a picture of said boyfriend on her uber-kawaii cell phone?  Yes, of course she does.

I still wince a little remembering how the screams bounced back and forth on the cement walls of the hallway.  As we continued to wander the hallways, I heard one girl walk past whining (in Japanese, of course) about how jealous she was of my cute friends.  As we rounded a corner a boy threw himself against a wall and exclaimed, "She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!"  Suzie is, quite possibly, the picture of perfection in the eyes of Japanese teenagers.  Blonde hair, blue eyes, small face (a very good thing in Japan and a category in which I consistly fail to impress), ear piercings, and a cellphone with pictures of her boyfriend.  My students were talking about it for the next week.

My apologies to Heather and Sue for 1) not sufficiently warning you about the squeals ad shrieks and pointing, and 2) not sufficiently warning you about the intense awkwardness of standing and waiting for a group of Japanese students to work up the balls to ask you a question. (Dear readers, ask someone to stare silently and intently at your face as though trying to memorize it or convince themself that you aren't a figment of their imagination.  Ask them to do this for a minute or more and perhaps you will begin to understand my day to day existence.)  That has taken me months to get used to, though I credit Macalester College with giving me the skills to wait out even the most awkward of situations.  Bring it on kids.

 from front to back: Katy, Karen, and Adam

For Cara

My cousin Cara is gone.  She was 16.

Last Saturday night, in the wake of a thunderstorm and under a rainbow, she left.  Those who love her know that the grief of losing someone so precious is tempered by the knowledge that she has finally found peace.

A friend once told me that the Japanese love sakura above all flowers because they symbolize the transience of existence.  Like rainbows and shooting stars, their beauty is all the more breathtaking because it is gone before we are ready to let go.  

These are for you, Cara.

With love, forever and ever,

 Maggie

In Pictures

Photos courtesy of Heather and Suzie

at Oyama Jinja in Kanazawa

not sure why, but I can see our 6th grade selves in this picture

our new friends at a festival in Takaoka, Toyama

I'm in love with the kid in the front.

total popstardom

 the old man who pulled some curious-looking strangers in off the street and made them tea

The cheapest tea kettle: $300 

The most expensive tea kettle: a good year's salary

Drinking tea with him: priceless

Creighton, me, and Heather in the back of Adam's somewhat petite car. 

Suzie, how on earth did you get shotgun?

random temple in the Noto

To get to it you must first pass through the Stairway of Gloom without disturbing any of the many minions of the High Priestess of the Creepy Crabs.  The Japanese townsfolk seemed surprised to see us return whole.

Impressions of Japan

Heather and Suzie spent a week with me in Kanazawa before heading off to find more adventures in Kyoto and then Tokyo.  I asked Heather to write something about her trip for my blog.

Impressions of Japan
By Heather Albrecht


When I grow up I want to be an old Japanese tea kettle shop owner who pulls curious-looking strangers off the street into the comfort of my cozy tea kettle shop and makes them tea from one of my many kickin’ tea kettles. And since I’ll be an old Japanese man I won’t have to wear any crazy fashionable strappy high heeled shoes.

Well, I guess the man part isn’t so important. I would very happily be a friendly old Japanese woman with lime green highlights who regularly leads lost, curious-looking strangers to the places they are trying to find.


Yes, definitely lime green highlights.

And I’ll be old enough that I can get away with fashionable flats.

Problem solved.


As a friendly old Japanese woman with lime green highlights I will eat soba noodles, ramen, and curry all of my days and drink tea from a kickin’ tea kettle given to me from my tea kettle shop owner friend and not miss rhubarb and apples so much because I wouldn’t know what I was missing. Maybe.

I will also be an active, spritely old woman who regularly runs through thickets of vermilion torii gates (I will never be able to run through them all because they don’t really end—they just continue on past Fushimi Inari shrine into the clouds) and bamboo groves and cool off from my run with thirteen of my favorite zen rocks. I will have to live in Kyoto.

I will divide my days between carving wooden ramen ladles and rice paddles (the ones that fit perfectly in your hand and make you want to sing) which I will sell in a pottery/chopstick store and gardening in one of the top three gardens in my prefecture. My specialty will be tree bending. I will do this with Tiny Tim Cratchet crutches. Tall ones. No tree will be safe. I will shape them all to my will. All of them.

I will be very happy with my life and think fondly on the days when I wasn’t a friendly old Japanese woman with lime green highlights. Indeed, I will have very strong memories of my first trip to Japan and then my return to Minnesota where the corn fields look like lush, overgrown rice paddies minus the paddy and the meadows turn gold and purple as the sun sets and give off a sweet smell that smells interestingly like tatami mats.

June: the first half

I was wondering how it could possibly be July already.  I mean, really?  July?  Inconceivable.

So I checked my calendar just to be sure, and it turns out that it is definitely July.  It is the beginning of my last new month in Japan.  After July, it is all old hat for another year.  What my calendar also reminded of was how obscenely busy June was.  Here's a not-so-brief recap of the first half of June.  Up next, Heather and Suzie Visit, SobetsuPROM, and How I Acquired a Kitten.

The first week of June I was visited by Amy and Mike.  Amy is a friend of mine from Warsaw, and Mike is a friend of hers from college.  They were spending a couple of weeks in Japan seeing the sights via friends' couches.  They stayed the 2nd and 3rd before heading back to Tokyo on Friday the 4th.

 on the most photographed street in Japan

Mike, Amy, me, and Loki eating ramen at Ippudo, an important stop on any Japan trip.

As they left for Tokyo, I packed a bag and headed in a different direction: the ALT Soccer Tournament in Nagano, a biannual event in which hundreds of foreigners descend upon the small mountain town of Sugadaira.

 You can't see the snow-capped peaks that surrounded us, but they were there, and it was awe-inspiring.

I had been to the last tournament in November as a spectator (and I brought all of our most creative Macalester cheers with me) because, well, let's face it.... I am not particularly athletically-inclined, nor do I particularly care. My friend Loki likes to make fun of me for flat out refusing to run unless it becomes absolutely necessary. What can I say? To thine own self be true.... I don't run.

See Karen run.  See Maggie stand.

Once upon a time, I did give soccer a go. It was the fall of 8th grade, and we had just moved to Poland. A new country, new friends, a new sport... it seemed like a great idea. In retrospect, I was a tall, uncoordinated Minnesotan girl trying to play soccer for the first time with a bunch of Europeans. I didn't make the team. Fair enough, Mr. Erni. I'm sure I looked an awful lot like a baby giraffe with inner ear problems learning to walk.

But that was then, and this was now, and here I was in a new country with new friends and a new resolution to do new stuff, and they were asking me to play and promising that no one would be cut and that everyone (with a few notable exceptions) would be beginners, and all the cool kids were going to join, and wouldn't you like to play soccer too?

So there I was, baby-giraffing it up and trying to remember why I had thought it was such a brilliant idea to play a sport that required not only that I run, but that I run while simultaneously trying to manipulate a round object in a direction of my choosing, (ummm, what? seriously?), when Stacy (organizer, MVP, and general team-holder-togetherer) came up and asked who wanted to fling themselves in front of hurtling soccer balls, to sacrifice life and limb, to be the last thing standing between the opposing team and our goal.

"Ummm, so, you basically don't have to run, right?"
"Pretty much."
"And you get to catch the ball with your hands instead of your feet?"
"Most of the time."
"Fabulous. I'm in."

And that was how I became the women's goalie for Ishikawa FC.

 Yes, I am defending the goal while wearing gardening gloves.

Turns out there is slightly more to being a goalie than standing around and neatly catching balls that are passed straight to you, but thanks to the patient coaching and question-answering of Stacy and a few of the guys, by the time the tournament rolled around I knew most of the rules and was looking somewhat less giraffe-esque.

We finished the tournament elated to be in third and got a tacky trophy (with a man on it... come on Title IV, where are you when I need you???) and a case of beer for our troubles. Despite the fact that Stacy (our golden ticket) and several other great players are leaving us, I am excited to go back next year and see what we can do.

Next year I will remember to put sunscreen on the backs of my knees. 

(These shots may have been taken during warm-up, but they still look pretty sweet, thanks Bill!)



(Unfortunately, the men's tournament is less a bunch of inexperienced and ragtag  ALT teams and more a league of semi-professional middle-aged men's teams that practice weekly or more... Our Ishikawa men, though greatly improved from November, took last.)

With only 4 days to recover, the next Friday was a joint birthday party/potluck/karaoke/sleepover extravaganza down in Komatsu. We ate, we drank, we sang, we did purikura (my first time! they are now decorating my phone, as they should), and Saturday afternoon we went further south to Kaga to play with some orphans.

 I was in the paper airplane making group, but my job description quickly morphed into "will hold hula hoop over head so that adorable small children can attempt to throw paper airplanes through it (re:at your face)". The orphanage is gorgeous and full of light. I don't know how the social stigma is or the reality of their everyday lives, but at the very least they have great facilities.

The kids were all so sweet. I got hugs from a couple as we were leaving. I wish we could have stayed longer.

*None of the photos in this post were taken by me.  Thank you Amy, Bill, and Caroline!

I have a cat?

I acquired a cat. Yesterday.  I have named her Picasso, and aside from a gross eye infection which the vet gave me medecine for, she is beyond cute.

land of milk and hummus

Beth moved to Lebanon and has a blog called land of milk and hummus.  Check it out.

Garden Update

Yes, it has been 2 weeks and all you get is a garden update.  Too bad.  The rest of the family trip, a visit to Seoul, an epic journey to New Zealand, and a recent visit from two of my favorite people will have to wait because my garden is glorious.  Do you know how tomatoes smell?  They smell elemental, like earth and sunshine and childhood summers all rolled into one.  Seriously, go stick your face in one, and tell me it wasn't good.

And speaking of, my tomato plants are HUGE and, until recently, all that abundant virility was threatening to tip over their somewhat dainty window box.  That problem was solved by a ￥１００ contraption designed specifically for window box virility containment.  However, I imagine (note to self) that it would have been substantially easier to install before they exploded.  Oops.  Lesson learned.

By the time the tomatoes are pickable (there are 9 little green spheres and blossoms abound), the basil should be in fine form.  It is growing riotously.  I may plant another bucket.

If the tomatoes have all the juicy passion of a soap opera star, the peppers have the stoic perseverance of a former-Soviet Bloc drama. (Hey Beth, "Shit, my shirt is so ugly.")  They continue to do their thing, producing minimalist white blossoms and baby fruits while growing ever taller. 

The cilantro sprang (wait, now say "sprang" ten times... what a weird word) forth from the dirt like guests at a suprise party, going from invisible to an inch tall in one afternoon.  I had just about given up hope that the parsley would ever appear when the first seedling popped out.  The rest soon followed suit.

I recently went to Yoko and Tamotsu's house for dinner, and Yoko sent me home with two pots of fun things, pretty purple and black seeds, and three bundles of old, old fabrics (Mom and Linda, they are beautiful.  Just beautiful.  We sat around after dinner and went through every stack before she taught me how to tie a proper Japanese bundle and took me on a walk with Tamotsu to play with the fireflies.  I love them.)  One pot from Yoko has three of my very own soybean plants and some volunteer lettuces.  The other is a delightful mix of cosmos, chives (spring onions??), and something that resembles flat leaf parsley.

This morning, after springing out of bed at 6 am much like my cilantro (will wonders never cease? who am I?), I put on the coffee and planted a pot of thyme, another of sage, and a big pot of climbing pole beans and zinnias.  I am just now realizing that that may have been a bad combo... meh, it'll work out somehow.

And then it was summer...

Despite the fact that I am still working on telling the (many) stories of my first cold, dark, and unimaginably wet Kanazawa winter, time has passed.  Seasons have changed, and we have arrived into glorious summer weather made all the more deliciously extravagant by my not-so-fleeting memories of months past.  In celebration of the season, I have planted a garden.

A few weeks ago I was mentally bemoaning my lack of a lawn, garden, patio, or even a balcony.  I mean, really, is a balcony sooooo much to ask for?  I just want a little space of my own to sit outside, soak up some sunshine and maybe grow some basil in a bucket?  Come on Japan, everyone and their grandmother has a balcony or two, and I get a laundry room?  Lame.  And that is when the genius struck.  My parking space.  My parking space!  I could plant a garden in my parking space!  The only cars that ever hang out there are Katy's or Karen's, and neither of those take up more than half of the space.  Brilliant!

It took awhile before I could bring my dreams to fruition, but as of two weeks ago, I have a garden.  After some consultation with my mother and gardener extraordinaire, I got two window boxes and planted two pretty sizable tomato plants in one and three green pepper plants in the other.  I threw a lemon balm into a bucket I got at the 100 yen (~ $1) store and sprinkled an entire packet of basil speeds in another (unappreciated) cleaning bucket from under my sink.  The lemon balm (despite an aphid infestation, gross) is growing by leaps and bounds, and the basil seedlings are as cute as can be.  Wonder how long I have to wait until I can eat them...

In the afterglow of planting things and with hands still dirty, I grabbed a grape chu-hai left over from the weekend and sat back to admire my handiwork.  It is remarkable what a little sunshine and some plants can do to a space.  It felt welcoming.  I wanted to go out and buy a deck chair and just sit there looking at my plants and listening to the kids playing down the block.  And Charlie, I wished that you lived in the neighborhood.  I would get out the Scrabble board, make a couple of G&Ts, and we could sit around bickering about word validity and scaring small children.

You know, you still owe me a visit.  :-D

The spearmint that I am keeping hostage on my living room window is threatening to take over by force, but I have plans to show it who's boss.  Anyone for mojitos and homemade mint ice cream? 

Next on my list of parking space garden experiments are two more pots of herbs, one of cilantro and another of parsley.

p.s.  assuming I get this aphid thing under control (dish soap???) does anyone know what you can actually do with lemon balm?  Sticking my face in it on my way to school every morning has been pretty satisfying thus far, but there have got to be some other (less awkward) ways to enjoy it.

In which we had a Christmas day dance-off...

...and won, clearly.

After our pilgrimage to the Great Buddha of Kamakura, we returned to downtown Tokyo to spend the night at a friend's apartment and get ready for an early morning trip to Tsukiji Market.  We had heard that if you can bear to wake up before the crack of dawn and make your way unobtrusively through piles of fish slime and whizzing buzz saws waiting for freshly auctioned creatures of the deep, you can watch them auction off hundreds of thousands of dollars of premium grade tuna.  Whether or not four white people, three of whom tower at 6+ feet, can be unobtrusive in Japan was beside the point.  We were getting ready for an adventure.

Of course, Joe and I realized that waking up before 5:00 a.m. was not a sensible option, and that a much more reasonable choice would be to simply stay awake until 5:00 a.m.  And what better place to stay awake in Tokyo than at ageHa, a massive club on the waterfront?

Our mother wholeheartedly concurred with the logic of this plan.

And so, our looks completed by a pair of fly kicks (Joe) and fake eyelashes (myself... perhaps not an experiment to be repeated) we set off.  Though the DJs were only okay, the poolside dance floor proved to be the perfect setting for an impromptu dance-off with a couple of Japanese hipsters.  Five years in Eastern Europe combined with countless off-the-chain-basement-raves (Joe) and more than a few kitchen-dance-parties-of-one (yours truly) to make us the clear winners.  We politely bowed, clutched hands, and smiled our goodbyes to our new friends before we returned to the main floor where hundreds of Japanese people faced the DJ and bobbed ever so slightly side-to-side as the beat pounded from every direction.

You see, Japanese people don't dance.  Well, perhaps that is too broad a statement... at all of the live performances that I have been to, the audience appeared to have all gotten together pre-show and decided that they would, under no circumstances, deviate from the side-to-side bob.  As with many things in Japan, the gaijin did not get the memo and can be easily spotted as their fellow concert goers politely bob away leaving a "safe zone" around the dancing deviant.

We eventually tired of all this space-clearing and realized that 5:00 a.m. comes faster than one might expect.  We returned home in the nick of time and promptly set off for Tsukiji Market where we encountered more styrofoam cartons of UFOs (Unidentifiable Fish Organs) that I could have ever imagined.  We did manage to sneak (re: gaijin smash) our way to the super-secret backroom where, only 6 days later a tuna would be sold for $175,000.

Eventually, we were shooed back to the main area.  Rumor has it that the bulk of the tuna auctions now happen completely behind closed doors.

Check out videos of the tuna auctions here.  They're not mine, but we were in there dodging men with hooked poles and "turret trucks" (ターレットトラック) - which look more like pod-racers full of tuna - with the rest of them.

Some photos of the carnage...

inspecting the fish and havin' a cigarette... not an uncommon sight

back to the main market area, watch the fingers now...

He could fillet a fish in less time than it took me to write this sentence.

Any guesses?  My money is on ovaries.  Ramble: I have, in fact, eaten fish ovaries.  Truth be told, they're not bad.

slabs of tuna, probably about a meter long

tea time

My apologies

My apologies, dear blog.  I have been neglecting you of late, and for that, I am sorry.  Forgetting is so easy with commercial free TV downloads and food blogs (my latest obsession and an excellent way to pass the time at work when I can't come up with anything else to laminate) and naps and trips and... I forget that I get joy from writing, that reworking phrases and running-on sentences is fun, and most of all that rereading what I have written brings back moments that might have otherwise disappeared forever.  So for all of the moments that I have already lost, I'm sorry I waited too long.

Here is one moment that has remained.

It was Christmas morning in Tokyo.  I think it is fair to say that Joe was somewhat less than delighted to be dragged out of bed and to the train station so we could head an hour south to a city called Kamakura whose main claim to fame is the Kamakura Daibutsu (literally, the Kamakura Big Buddha).

Joe:  "How big is this Buddha?"
Me: "I don't know.... big."
Joe: "Like, how big?  A couple stories?"
Me: "Look, I don't know.  It's a big Buddha, okay?  It's probs gonna be pretty big."
Joe: "grumblegrumblegrumble..."

We did a bit of wandering around the town before striking out towards the Big Buddha.  We paused at a shrine along the way.

Joe: "Is this it?  Where's the Buddha?"
Maggie: "Maybe, look, I don't know.  I don't think this is it, cause it's supposed to be big, and I don't see any gigantic peaceful looking dudes, do you?"
Joe: "What is this then?  Why aren't we going to see the Buddha?"
Maggie:  ".................."

Photos from the unidentified shrine, complete with mini-Buddha filled cave.

 
After wandering around said unidentified temple and garden, we arrived at the gate to the main event: The Big Buddha.

...walking along the path....

Joe: "Is this it?"
Me: "Yeah, I think so."
Joe: "Are you sure?"
Me: "Well, that sign right there says 'Kamakura Daibutsu', so yeah, it looks that way."
Joe: "So where's the... oh...... daaaaaamn....... that is a big Buddha."
Me: "Uh huh."

Lost the sun, found a pumpkin

Spring Vacation Text Message Update
Katy and I spent two days wandering around Naoshima checking out
modern art (the beach pumkin is a classic photo opp), and we are now
preparing to go tuck into our surprisingly unadorable mountainside
hostel in Oboke and get ready for the long train ride home.

Chasing the sun

Spring Vacation Text Message Update:
Hello all, Katy and I wish you sunshine and wine, both of which have
made our vacation Japantabulous.
Katy and Maggie
*Photo taken at the top of Kotohira Shrine, Kagawa, Shikoku.