Meet the mayor, trip to K's Denki, Welcome B-B-Q
Trip Start
Jun 27, 2009
1
3
47
Trip End
Jun 25, 2011
Nachikatsuura-cho,
Japan
Sunday, August 13, 2006
I included some pictures of my appartment :) I'm slowly rearranging and adding color, so it's looking more homey everyday. Only one cockroach killing so far, it took almost a whole can of spray to kill it, I think it ran even faster when I started spraying. Don't worry though I bought kitchen gloves to dispose of it and any future bugs I have to kill.
Friday morning Lily and I were taken to meet the mayor of our town. We were ushered into this big boardroom type room with comfy love seats. We met the mayor and did a brief (when I say brief I mean I said the 3 sentence of Japanese I know at this point) introduction then sat down. He had a welcome speech prepared in English that was really cute. We gave him our omiyage (gifts) and he unwrapped my D.C. coffee mug and said "Oh, this is beautiful!" and "Ahhh, Hennessy" to Lily's small bottle of Hennessy. Then we were interviewed and photographed by reporters from the local paper. All around it was pretty awkward but fine.
Next Shima-san took us to apply for internet connection at this store called K's Denki. It's like Best Buy, Target, Office Depot and Sears all in one. We had so much fun looking around. They had so many cool things Ive never seen before like a CD cleaner, tons of kinds of heated toilet seats, 100's of colored cell phones, mechanical bulls, massage chairs, punching bags, hundreds of types of air-conditioners, computers, tvs and more...There's a picture of Shima-san riding the mechanical bull, we were laughing so hard...how many people here can say they watched their supervisor ride a mechanical bull on the 3rd day here? After that we went home to get ready for our welcome party/ 'enkai'/ 'riverside B-B-Q'.
00 the 'gated community'
We met Shima-san and some other BOE people at the BOE at 5:15, piled into 4 tiny cars and drove to the Ota River.We parked the car and walked down this stone path to find a huge white tent, about twenty people furiously cooking on make-shift grills, setting up traditional Japanese tables on the riverbank, with old cardboard boxes for seat cushions to sit on. Lily and I watched the preparations, not knowing how to say 'can we help with anything?' we took pictures of all the delicious foods that were being grilled. Some younger guys were doing something in the river, learned later that they were making a circular dam out of rocks in which they put a watermelon. They were cooling the watermelon in the river for dessert!
We talked in simple English with some of the more daring men from the BOE, and met some young girls that work at the library (next to the BOE). When it was time to eat we were ushered to our "seats" and were face to face with a LOT of food that we weren't familiar with. They know now that I am a "begetarian" so I had in small bowls infront of me: mini prawn/crayfish things (a man from the BOE had caught them that afternoon), sweet potato, eggplant, green pepper tempura, clams, conch shells, some small fish that had been grilled WHOLE, grilled salad, and grilled onions. Oh, and lots and lots of Kirin and Sapporo beer, and sake. Women all have to kneel on their knees for the entire meal, not fair! I asked Shima-san why women have to sit like that to which he replied, "Oh I don't know!" 3 men welcomed us in Japanese and said something along the lines of 'we are happy you are in Nachikatsuura town, please work hard teaching, good luck!' THEN....it was our turn to introduce ourselves...we did an okay job, but we definitely need to prepare an introduction speech so we aren't caught so off guard and have to speak from our limited memory.
01 view
The people are really nice whenever we speak, they always smile and laugh - basically because they are amazed that anyone that's not Japanese can speak their language. We said "Kampai!" in unison, which is mandatory before you have even a sip of your drink, (it means Cheers). We made simple conversation with people sitting around us, I think there were 35 people at our B-B-Q total. We met former principals, security guards, other members of the city hall, and BOE, etc...I'm proud to say that Lily and I tried everything that was put infront of us, even though when I pulled the meat of the clam out of the shell it had GREEN on it!! I even ate a whole entire (head and eyes included) grilled fish! So chewy and dry - yuck. The only bad thing in Japan is that if you eat something they will always put more infront of you....so it's a lose lose battle if you don't like the food, but don't want to be rude. After dinner we became friends with this older man who had been chugging sake, and he motioned us to the river to skip rocks with him and some of the other men. He showed me the right way to do it and I was actually good! They didn't know we skipped rocks in the states. Then we lit off some fireworks and sparklers and waded in the river. The last part of the enkai was the salted watermelon. I taught them about watermelon seed spitting contests and they liked that! Overall it was a really fun evening, definitely a different enkai than others I've heard about, I liked that it was on a river at sunset.
Saturday morning we got up and took the train to the next town over, Kushimoto, to visit 2 JET's named Justin and Tony. We explored their beach and these really cool rocks. We found lots of cool creatures in the tide pools too: sea cucumbers (which are SO gross), hermit crabs, fish, crabs, snails, sand dollars, and beautiful shells. We even hiked up to a small shrine on one of the rocks. We ate a $1 conveyer belt sushi place, you just pull whatever plates you want off the belt as it goes by your table. The waitress comes by your table at the end of the meal and scans your plates with this remote control scanner, and a receipt prints out right away. Lily and I took the train back and spent the evening organizing our apartments with the amazing items we found at the dollar store.
Sunday morning Justin and Tony met us at our train station and we all went to another nearby town called Shingu. We visited a park, a 'floating island' and the ruins of an ancient castle. We did a lot of walking and even more sweating...
This week is Obon Festival, which is the celebration of the dead. Everyone goes to the towns where their ancestors are buried and visits them. A lot of people aren't at work today, but for some reason...we have to be!
