Tuesday, 25 September 2007

A few more weekends to the present!

The weekend after Zao was the JET welcome party. An event where we could meet the new and old JETs together. It was a very nice relaxing time although my partying got the better of me and I slipped in an effort to climb the steepish hill to the toilets and sprained my foot badly. I didn’t feel the pain then (let’s say I’d had one larger shandy….) but in the morning, wow did it hurt! I was limping, and if nothing else can say I provided Siobhan with a source of laughter for a few days as I hobbled about Japan and my daily life waiting for it to heal.

This is a carefully selected photo that tries to catch a portion of the party atmosphere, whilst still portraying me in a positive 'not-doing-something-too-stupid' light!

For breakfast we went to a place we discovered quite near to where I live called Coco’s. Apparently it’s an American based chain, and I had a bacon and cheese sandwhich and a roast beef sandwhich (baguette bread) but still, it was as close to the English classics as I’ll probably get over here and was much enjoyed!

The next weekend was my first long weekend - it had a public holiday, and the Japanese seem to have loads of them. I drove up to Kahoku with a few friends to meet another JET who’s town was holding a pretty big festival.

Before I reached Kahoku, I got a flat tyre - but I didn’t panic, me and the person I’d just picked up found the car jack and as soon as I’d done that I was quickly on my way to changing it. I only had a small emergency tyre so I had to find a new proper tyre as quickly as possible. It took me ages to find a place that sold the right size, and even then I had to wait for it to be delivered from somewhere else!


I was upset...

In Japan, with the mazillion festivals they have and love, its very easy to feel that when you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all. But, in honesty they all have something slightly different. This one was nice because it had giant floats and some nice traditional Japanese costume, dancing and even performance (I think Noh but I’m not sure). 

Beautiful Japanese dresses and Japanese floats

Kahoku temple

These poor kids had to perform a slow series of movements as they processed down the street with those heavy looking chimney sweeps....I don't know why, because Japanese houses don't even have chimneys!!!

The day before that one of Maggie’s friends invited us all round to her house for a meal and some drink. She put on a real banquet and it was delicious, some mexican food, some thai food and of course some Japanese food (delicious Imoni, I can’t get enough!). I don’t think she was expecting as many people as came (there were a few - read: two - unexpected Finnish exchange students who came along with Siobhan - they’re in Japan for six weeks) but she did a fantastic job and nice to spend a bit of time in a proper Japanese home! Thank you!



After that, we decided to do some good old Karaoke (strangely enough you start to love and look forward to it when in Japan…must be something in the water), we had great fun singing along to The Carpenters, Bon Jovi…and my karaoke speciality is fast becoming New York, New York - I go all out with the crooning on that number!

As you can clearly see, we take our Karaoke in Japan very seriously!

On our extra day off we decided to go to Sendai - this time we took the slow train, which was pretty slow - probably because of the bank holiday trains seemed to be a little more sporadic than usual which meant it took me about 4 and 1/2 hours (including waiting between train changes) to get from Shinjo to Sendai.

But when we were in Sendai we found some English bookstores (not that I need any with the Yamagata JET English library situated in my very house!) and we found an Indian Curryhouse! Hurrah, we could enjoy Basmati rice and some good naans (even cheese and garlic!) and some pretty nice curry - it didn’t quite have the selection we might find back in England (ie. on the menu there was ‘Chicken Curry, Fish Curry etc.’ but it was nice nonetheless. The chefs were Indian and seemed to speak a little English as we said thanks on the way out, but one of them must be married to a Japanese lady who served us - I thought she was Indian in her Indian outfit, but she spoke Japanese far too well, and understood us far too little for her not to be Japanese!



Mmm...Naan!

Another exciting thing is that Lush! (the popular handmade cosmetics store) is opening a shop next week in Sendai!) The Japanese don’t seem to be too strong on smelly stuff. One particular day at school I must have only had a shower with shower gel, and shampoo, and one of the kids thought I was wearing cologne? They don’t seem to wear aftershave or perfume, but seem to have a very acute sense of smell…..anyway, I can buy some nice smelly soaps and such hopefully which will remind me of England’s green and pleasant land!

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