My Bike

This post is about my bike. Now, that the snow has gone and the weather is warm I have been riding again. It was something that I missed all winter when the snow got to bad. My bike is an American bike that I found second hand in a Japanese bike shop in Morioka. Even getting it home was an adventure. I bought the bike and took it to the Morioka train station to take back to Ichinohe. (This is in the first few months we were here mind you.) I get there in time for the last train. The conductor tells me that I can't take the bike on the train. I have to take it apart and put it in a bag. I tell him ,"I'm the English teacher in Ichinohe. This is the last train. I can't go to a bike shop now and get a bag. Please let me on." A drunk man comes up and talks to the conductor. He says that if I take the bike apart he, Samantha, and I can take a piece on and then its not a bike. So, we take off the front wheel and the seat. Then the drunk tells the conductor that its ok and just motions for me to keep moving carrying the frame and hide the bike in the back of the train. Thats how I got my bike home.

I ride my bike every day for about an hour to work and back. In the mountains it's a great ride that is absolutely breathtaking. I also go to Ninohe on it for things like donuts and DVD rentals on the weekends. I really like the bike more than any car I have ever had. Car people always talk about feeling the road. Well there is no feeling the road like on a bike. Every rock, every change in road texture is felt and has to be understood. As for the feeling of speed, yes you don't go as fast but there is something about knowing you are producing all the speed you have. Also, what powers the bike gets stronger the more I ride not weaker. Then there is the bike itself. I like bikes because I understand the parts better. Cars are complicated and only getting more so with the on board computers. The age of the shade tree mechanic is ending, but in a year of use I have yet to have a bike problem I haven't been able to repair.

Now, hauling stuff on the bike is a bit of an adventure sometimes. Food is pretty easy, either grocery bags off the handle bars or my back pack. Some things though aren't that simple. For, example the picture at the top of this post. I had to bring a roll of butcher paper home to paint Christmas play sets on. Now, the easy thing would have been to have a car person bring it to me. I took another path. I got twine and lashed it to my bike frame so that I could ride home from Chokai. It survived a 30 minute mountain ride with no problems. One of my goals this summer is to try and ride to the Prefecture Capital, Morioka, which is on 63 kilometers from here.

Oddities

Hey I was going to post this whole thing about Sports day at Chokai, but then I realised that all the really cool pictures we have of Sports day, are pictures of the kids. It's a big no-no for a JET to post pictures of the kids online. I'll see if I can crop the kids faces or something, but for now the Sports day post is shot.

Whelp, my motivation to write another serious post is minimal. Instead, I'll assume that you all need more Japanese oddness in your life. Don't we all?

Might I introduce Mameshiba?

Mameshiba are these little talking beans from a set of truly brilliant commercials. (Check out the Jellybean one, it's my favorite.) They've got all kinds of merchandise too. They're known for saying "ne shiteru?" (Did you know?) and then unloading some strange fact upon innocent bystanders. If nothing else, these adorable little beans have taught me "ne shiteru?" ... Unfortunately I have very little need to ask people that.

Winter Tips

It's now May 15 and finally warm and nice. Its 75 or 23 degrees depending on you measurement and Samantha and I have every window open and are eating pineapple on the couch. That's right the weather is so nice we aren't using the kotatsu(heated table) we are sitting on the couch. This makes it seem like the perfect time for us to write our tips, tricks and realizations about surviving an Iwate winter.

1. Accept that you will be cold inside the house. Remember you're not aiming for warm, you're aiming for acceptable. And acceptable gets colder then you ever thought.

2. It's frozen. I don't need to know what it is to tell you it's frozen. Here is a partial list of frozen things: toothpaste, shampoo, milk, juice, cucumbers, wet laundry (the first time you take a block of laundry out and break it apart is a hard day), the floor of shower, drain of washer (meaning water is thrown up onto the floor), floor, pots left out to dry freezing to the counter, Samantha's wet hair.

3. Kerosene is a cruel mistress. Yes, if you use it your house will be nice and warm and your laundry will dry. However, if you use it too much you will die. Too much is over 3 hours. Also 5 minutes after you turn it off it's cold again.

4. Kotatsu is your friend. Kotatsu keeps you warm, but only you. This means that your clothes won't dry and every where else is cold. At least kotatsu wont kill you.

5. Reduce. Samantha and I have a 6 room house in summer. In winter we live in two rooms that are really one larger room partitioned off with sliding walls. We make brief expaditions to the other rooms like the toilet, shower and kitchen but that's it. Also, the warm room has to have every thing in it, you drying laundry, your bed, table, kotatsu, heater, tv, couch and things that need to stay warm (as in food that has been cooked already).

6. Bubble wrap. It's for more than packages home. In Japan people put it on the windows in winter. You spray the window with water and then stick the wrap to it. That means that you can't see outside but that's OK only snow is out there anyway.

7. Electric blanket. Its the third best thing for winter. You can warm the bed before you get in it. Like other forms of heat there is the risk that if left on all night it will burn the house down, but that's a risk you have to decide yourself.

8. Blankets are heavy. Samantha and I slept under, I kid you not, 12 inches of blankets. It was so heavy that you couldn't move around at all in you sleep and if you did and somehow exposed an arm to the cold, well you would know it fast.

9. Blankets are strange shapes here. Most of the blankets I have ever seen in Japan are too small to dangle off the bed. Meaning you have to put them on sideways making them too short so you need a lot. I think on a normal winter night we had 8 blankets.

10. Cheer up. There are things to do in winter like skiing and it wont last forever. If you let the winter ruin you life it will. Yes, winter is both the longest and worst time of the year in Ichinohe but it ends so just make it through. Do what you need to do to be happy and warm.

If you are reading this as an ALT being sent to Iwate don't be scared its not too bad. I mean its no reason to not come.

Two Weeks In Tohoku

For those of you who hadn't heard my parents just came to visit us for 2 weeks. Now, I know what all my college friends are thinking 2 weeks with their parents in a paper house sounds difficult, to be diplomatic. Well, it was actually a lot of fun. They came during a period here called Golden Week. Golden Week is a magical time when 4 national holidays happen in the same week giving the whole country a nice time off. Its also when if you live in the frozen north the cherry blossoms finally bloom and everything starts to get warm. We were able to do a ton of really cool stuff thanks to holiday and my Chokai JHS school principle who is a great guy. I will be braking this post into discriptions and pictures of the places we went so here we go on Two Weeks in Tohoku.

Sendai
I didn't bring my camera to pick them up in Sendai so all Sendai pictures are by my father. I really thought that it would be mostly pick them and head back home. However, they got pretty good on the Japanese time right away. We walked around town the day after we arrived. We found a Cherry Blossom Festival in Sendai park, my parents got to see the famous Sakura (cherry blossoms) and eat some mochi. There really aren't to many famous places in Sendai the park, train station, and shopping areas are it. We were lucky and found a craft fair in part of the city. There were a lot of people selling hand made cloths and jewelery. One of the most interesting was the ring you see below. After that picture is the festival we saw.


The only bad part of the Sendai stay was the hotel. I got us a 3 person room to save money and it was so incredibly small. There were 3 beds and no place to set your feet.


Ichinohe
There were a lot of things that we did in Ichinohe. They got to go to all but one of my schools which let them see me teach class and press them into helping teach class. My kids were excited to meet them and ask them questions. At Kozuya we got lucky and they ate lunch with the kids. Mom didn't finish her whole school lunch which does not happen. One of the kids and I just starred at her unfinished soup confoundedly. The student dumped it out for her in the end. I was glad that my students were able to have the opportunity to talk to people who weren't their English teachers.
The house we live in here was interesting for them to. They were especially surprised by the toilet, which has a hand washing sink on top of it. The water that you wash your hands in fills the tank and then later goes into the bowl. The weather was a bit cool for them so they spent a lot of their time cold. Really it made me think about how used to the cold I have gotten. I mean I'm not really cold now but it hardly gets above 70 in the day here.
The big highlight of the time in Ichinohe was going to the Goshono Jomon historical site. About 15 minutes on foot out of town is a museum and park built around an archeology site. The Jomon people were the first people to make pottery in Japan. In the north of Japan they lived by hunting and fishing. Their houses were built partly under ground with log and dirt roofs. The museum was great in had a really cool theater and a lot of great pottery. The park had a rebuilt Jomon village in it that you could go into and even climb on. Pictures from here on mine.


Hachinohe
The Principle took my parents, Samantha and I to Hachinohe. In spite of heavy winds it was a great trip. We went to the Hachinohe city museum which I found frankly a bit odd. It jumped from Jomon pottery to the Samurai to modern technology in 3 huge leaps. By the museum was a castle reconstruction. It was an old castle with wooden walls really more like a small walled village then what you think when you here castle. The best part of it was they let us try on reproduction samurai armor. You can judge for your self who would have been the best samurai.


After the castle we went for a short ride on a small boat. A SHARK boat. Thats right the boat looked like a shark. We went around the harbor in Hachinohe and feed the sea gulls. They will eat right out of you hand. It is quite startling to have a shrimp cracker grabed from you hand by a sea gull. We also learned the Japanese word for sea gull is Umineko. They call sea gulls sea cats because of how they sound.


The next place was some where that we have blogged about before, the Hachinohe fish market. Or as I call it the Hank Williams fish market because they play only Hank Williams music. We got to see alot of really fresh fish and feasted and I mean feasted on it. We ate shrimp, beef, fired chicken, scallops, squid, and just plain fish until we were fit to burst then went to a bath house. There is nothing in the world more enjoyable then feasting and then sitting around in hot water. Japanese hot spring are something that we don't have in America that I will miss so much when we finally move back to America.

Lake Towada
Lake Towada is one of the largest lakes in all of Japan. There is a park around the lake that really looks alot like the Smokey Mountains. We got to walk around the park a bit and see the river that runs threw it and the snow melt coming down from the mountain. Lake Towada itself is huge, its so big that the boat ride we did on it took 50 minutes and crossed the narrowest part. The lake went right up to the mountain and shore was dotted with little island and inlets. To tell the truth it looked kind of like how I imagine the coast of Alaska to look, snow capped mountains, cold water, and a gray sky like it could snow or rain any minute.

Hirosaki
This is one of the top 3 most famous places to view cherry blossoms in all of Japan. We went on the best day of the whole season so it was packed. Its a park that used to have a castle and now mostly has cherry trees. There are literally thousands of them in every color cherry trees come in so just white and pink. However, it was one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. There was one place that was a tunnel made of cherry trees. To be honest though if it had had a bit less people it would have been perfect. As it was there was a bit to much worry about getting split from the group to fully enjoy it. I'm really glad that my parents got to experience it though there is nothing like the crowds and the trees its something everyone who visits Japan should try and experience.



There is a lot more that we did that Samantha will pick up Thursday. All in all my parents trip here was great. I was proud to show off how much Japanese I knew and how I could get by here. I know that there are plenty of more famous places in Japan they could have gone to but I wanted them to see what my life here was like. Tokyo and Kyoto will be there next time.