Mostly November
Trip Start
Jul 27, 2006
1
13
19
Trip End
Aug 2007
Miwa,
Japan
Sunday, March 18, 2007
01. The Turkey Cutting
Apparently something that doesnt happen often cause they were amazed at my frog catching abilities. Kids, so darn cute. Needless to say I was eating sweet potatoes for a good week straight after that cause as reward for a hard days work you get to take some sweet potatoes home with ya. I only took 3 but they were so big they lasted forever!! Good thing I like sweet potaotes ALOT!! The following week is when the cities start to decorate for Christmas. It is wonderful. Nagoya station, which is pretty impressive on its own, gets decked out for the holiday season. There are HUGE and I mean HUGE Christmas trees that decorate the front of the station. And this year was a teddy bear theme. Along with the Christmas trees there were tons of cute little light up bears to look at. Displayed on the front of the station was also a slideshow of Christmas around Japan and the world. Paris and New York were two of the places that stick out in my mind at the moment. And of course in between the pictures are season`s greetings messages. Its all too adorable to handle. I enjoyed many a coffee`s and walks with Jess around the station that week to check out the progress, the decorations and the small art display. Very cool. Not only in Nagoya but in my small town as well there was quite the impressive display near the library. A little house made outta lights with Santa-san (as he`s affectionately referred to here) climbing the chimney. A tunnel made outta lights, a HUGE tree decorated in blue lights that I loved, and Christmas carols playing as you walk around this Christmas wonderland. Again it was all too cute to handle.
02. The chef Rowena and her friend
I wasnt sure if Japan really celebrated Christmas like we do, but apparently they are way into it. Some if not most families give presents from Santa and go to Church, yes a Christian church. I found out that Japanese are religious in a very interesting way, they celebrate all the major holidays of all the major religious. Hahaha! My kinda people. Christmas is on a much smaller scale than in America though and there are no large meals or family gatherings. Just the immediate family and maybe a small fake Christmas tree, but not usually. Christmas Eve in Japan is actually more like Valentine`s Day in America. Its a day to take your girlfriend or boyfriend out for dinner and buy presents for each other. It makes sense. Things are pretty romantic with all the Chrismas lights and light snow (if you`re lucky!!). Anyway, that was a good week checkin out the lights and decorations. The following week was Thanksgiving. It didnt really feel like Thanksgiving though. Especially since all the Christmas things taking place already. But thats because the Japanese dont celebrate Thanksgiving at all. It just so happened that this year Thanksgiving landed on a National Holiday. So we didnt have to go to school. We had a large gathering of JET`s from America as well as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Some people in the latter three groups had never celebrated Thanksgiving either. This came as quite a shock to me. I dont know why, but I just assumed everyone did it.
03. Some fun and games
Maybe because it is pretty much my favorite holiday. We even got to eat TURKEY!!! It was ordered online and had to be delivered to Japan, but nonetheless we had all the Thanksgiving food. Thanks Rowena!! We had pumpkin pie, pecan pie, cookies galore, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and gravy, tons of Turkey. It was basically heaven. AND to make things even better we got to watch an American football game that someone had downloaded. What a blast!! I seriously almost forgot I was in Japan for a minute. And after eating Japanese food for almost 4 months straight it was a good change of pace. Now I understand why Americans are so overweight!!! Also during Thanksgiving week, I took a cooking class with my supervisor. We made a crazy delicious and easier than I thought 4 course Japanese meal. Im totally pumped. If my kitchen wasnt freezing all the time Id be more inclined to actually cook it again. But man, that room in cold!! Id get hypothermia if I cooked that meal. It would just take way too long. Maybe in the next few weeks when the weather gets warmer but not too hot, I`ll give it a whirl again. Japanese food is tasty and pretty darn healthy too. Ok. This brings us to the last weekend in November. I went on the craziest hike of all time. I wanted some adventure in nature and I sure did get it. I went to Eastern Aichi prefecture and visited my friends Yuri and Drew who live in the Mountains up there. Yuri knew of a good hike to do so I put all my trust in him and off we went.
04. Yuri, my hiking buddy
Now I am so glad I did this hike. But it is clear that my definition of hike and Yuri`s definition of hike are two completely different things. This hike was only a half hike, the other half was mountain climbing. Oh yeah. Im not kidding. There were ladders, and ropes, and chains, and rock ledges involved. I was scared outta my mind but having a blast at the same time. I cant wait to do more hikes like it. I feel like maybe Im getting my bearing with it. Only one hike previous to this involved climbing rock walls and those rock walls were much much smaller than these ones. And in a much safer locale if you ask me. In spite of the fear, I made it to the top!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was GORGEOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was a good time to see some of the leaves changing and the mountains and rivers and towns nestled in between were amazing from up there. The last ladder led to a rock ledge where there is literally a mile drop on each side. I climbed the ladder, saw the view, thanked God I was still alive, and froze.......I mean I was clutching that rock like there was no tomorrow. Until......this all too intense and in way too good of shape for his age and own good man comes up the ladder behind me and needs to get past me on this ledge. I panicked!!! I looked at Yuri, who was just as comfortable as ever on this rock bridge and said I CANT MOVE!!! hahahhaa! Sheer panic. It was hysterical. Well, the man was quite persistent so I had to move or more like crawl to safety. Its a good thing he came too because other wise I probably would have just went right down the ladder and missed the very top of the mountain by like 50 feet. Going down was a little better than going up, but the second ladder still scared me. It was at a weird angle over this drop that just didnt seem too appealing to me. Yuri had to hold my hand and use many encouraging phrases to get me down that ladder and around the tree. But, I DID IT!!!!!!!!!!! So all in all November was GREAT. So much for the bought of homesickness. Nothing like some farming, holidays, cooking and hiking to cure that. Keeping busy is the key!! And so fun too. On to December. Which was just as hysterical as November. Pictures coming soon......Until next time!! 
