More info on the bamboo fight...

My JET colleague David just wrote a long post on his blog about the festival, including this description:

"My town, Rokugo, holds a festival on the 15th of February every year which involves the North and South side of the town having a square go with 20 foot long bamboo sticks. The concept is simple, as well as being scientifically proven I'm sure, if the North wins then there will be a good harvest for the year to come and if the South wins then the price of rice will rise. There are 3 rounds and during the final round a huge bonfire is set a light. It is also worth mentioning that it has been suggested that this festival is the 6th most dangerous in the world."

in case you were wondering...
This is what poor David looked like after being whacked by bamboo, kicked in the head by four people, and having his face stepped on (on purpose) - 9 stitches.

It's very cold

and I have a cold. boooo.

I went to two winter festivals this weekend, the Takeuchi Festival (aka giant bamboo fight) in Rokugo, and the Kamakura Festival (a.k.a. snow huts!) in Yokote. Akita is renowned for their winter festivals, so I felt obligated to go check them out. They were neat and totally worth the effort, though I'm not so sure it was such a good idea to stand in the snow at night when I was already sick...

Anyway pictures here:

Takeuchi and Kamakura Festivals

And video of the bamboo fighting here:

Two things...

I forgot to say Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

Also, I've definitely been in Japan longer than six months now!

Sapporo Snow Festival

Hello! I'm back from Sapporo and I got the pictures up here:

Hokkai-DO!

I'm not going to really write a recap here, because I pretty much described the whole trip in the captions. So go look and read! :)

Happy February!

I thought I'd post a little update about my weekend. I went to a masquerade party at a club on Saturday night for a charity called Peas for Peace, so I made a cool carnivale-esque mask and had a good time dancing away with my JET friends. I spent the night at my friend's place close to the city (we got home at 3:30am) and then I got up at 7:30am to meet my Japanese friends for my first snowboarding adventure.

Anyone who knows me is aware of how incredibly uncoordinated and clumsy I am. So, you can imagine if I can walk along a flat road without tripping, strapping a board to my feet and sending me out in the snow could really only mean disaster.

But, I survived! My Japanese friends were really kind and helped me a lot. By the end of the day I could make it down the run only falling twice, and I didn't break any bones - I just have sore muscles and a bruised bottom! (Thanks to Bunny for the pre-boarding advice: "Fall on your butt, not your face.")

And in my utter exhaustion last night, I spent some time thinking...

who invented snowboarding?
I want to know who sat around thinking, "hey, what if we strap our feet to a board and launch ourselves down a steep and icy hill?!"

crazy, is what that is.

But, I participated in this cultural phenomenon nonetheless. It was more frustrating than fun, but a good experience, and I like how every muscle in my body is aching. I also noticed how it teaches a number of good life lessons.

For example:
-it's easier to go fast than to go slow, but the consequences are much more disastrous.
-falling down only stings for a quick minute, it's the getting up that takes enormous effort and strength.
-you can't just give up halfway down the slope.
-even when you try and fail over and over and over, because you have to get up, you will.
-eating Japanese curry and rice makes everything better.

I guess I'd go again. The outing as a whole was more fun and fascinating than the actual snowboarding part, even when I was doing it successfully. But I'm always up for a good work-out, playing in the snow, and fun friends. :)

Pictures coming soon (they wouldn't let me bring my camera because they thought I would fall and break it, so I'm waiting for Yoshiki to send me pictures)!

In case you missed it...

I turned 22 last week! (on the 22nd! lucky!)

With the whole time difference thing, I determined I got basically two days of birthday, so I cashed in on it and celebrated twice!

The first was on the night of my birthday. Christy came up to my place bearing an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins, but it wouldn't fit in my tiny-sized freezer, so we put it outside in the snow and went out to dinner. The place I wanted to try was closed, but it worked out and we ended up at this great (and cheap!) Chinese restaurant with excellent food. Then we came back and ate the cake (snow = outdoor freezer... another thing I'd never thought about before). Oh, we even lit candles and Christy and I sang Happy Birthday to me! It was really really nice. =D

The second birthday was on Sunday, and thrown by my Japanese friends. We (8 in total) met up at my favorite place - Round1 Amusement Center, ate curry for lunch, karaoke'd for 2.5hrs, bowled two games, and went out for dinner/dessert at a place next door. I had SOOOO much fun!! So much fun! It was like all my favorite things (okay, bowling's not really a favorite, but I like it) in one day! With really fun people. =D

SEE PICTURES!!

Birthday and Int'l Day

Oh, there's also pictures of the International Day I went to at Christy's school. And of the really delicious cakes my English conversation class made me for my birthday this week. yay!


This weekend I'm going to attempt snowboarding with the same Japanese friends. Wish me luck! (and safety!!)

Photos!

Gee, you didn't have to wait long, did you? In fact, you were probably all asleep since I last posted, so you didn't even have to withstand suspense for these. Oh well.

I posted (almost) ALL the pictures from when Jessie and Joaquin were here. There's almost 300 of them, so the few I posted on this blog don't come close to encompassing their visit. Plus, in this album I've put all kinds of informative captions AND I mapped them all out (you can do that - Google's so handy!) so you can actually see where we were down to the block!

Click below to check out the pictures!!

Post, Post, and Garcia

ヤッタ！！！！！

I finally fixed my computer!!!! I can download music! and upload pictures!!

[don't read the rest unless you're interested in computer-y things]
In case you weren't aware, some time back in September, I did something weird that screwed up my computer so I couldn't access iTunes, upload photos via Facebook or iPhoto, update software, etc. It got weirder when I found out I only had the problem when connected to an ethernet cable, and everything worked fine on a wireless connection. It was frustrating, and sad, and my lack of knowledge with Macs left me feeling helpless.

After many failed attempts, I'd kind of given up hope of it ever working again, and was planning to buy a wireless router to see if that worked. Tonight, I figured I'd try one last suggestion from my family - delete Firefox and Safari and try reloading them. I was skeptical, but had nothing to lose, so I deleted Firefox (my default browser) and restarted. Then, I realized when I opened Safari (which I rarely/never use) that it wasn't working! It said it wasn't connected to the Internet, but obviously it was! I was able to use both Skype and iChat! I kind of panicked, because with Safari not working, there was no way I could reload Firefox (and thus fix Safari). I used some smooth talking (okay, I just asked) a friend on iChat to send me Firefox, and while it transfered, I got curious. I decided to check the preferences and settings of Safari again.

It dawned on me - proxies!!! They're helpful when you're connected trying to connect to a secure network, but when you're just connecting at home, they make it so you can't connect! Proxies!! I went to the proxy settings, and, indeed these, unlike the ones you can change easily in Firefox, are managed by the Mac OS Network Settings - which means they control all apps trying to connect to the Internet! AND mine were set for the proxy servers at one of my schools. So, all I had to do was uncheck a few boxes, and TA-DA!! After months of anguish (and illegal music downloads), I'm swept away with joy!

Now that things are working again, look for some photo albums coming soon on my google photos site (I'll let you know when I post).
Yaaaaay!!!!!

Blizzard: Day 2

Well, the wind stopped, but the snow is coming down like... glitter at an 8-year-old's birthday party. (weird simile? oh well)

I guess with less wind it's not a blizzard anymore; it's just a lot of snow.

I got a new (used) TV today from the vice principal of one of my elementary schools - which isn't exciting news for those of you who didn't know my TV broke three weeks ago (it made a buzzing sound and never turned on). So now I can watch 3 tv channels, and, the real benefit, DVDs of any region again. Yay!


This weekend I'm going to a friend's birthday dinner on Sat night, and my Japanese friends are taking me out for birthday karaoke and curry on Sunday. Oh, and the weather's supposed to be better tomorrow.

Here's hoping! :)

BLIZZARD!!

They're real!　
(and, no joke, that's these are the graphics for today's weather!)

Okay, so call me a naive California girl, but I always just kind of assumed "blizzards" were made up. You know, like the Abominable Snowman (think of that claymation Rudolph movie)! Well, today I learned I was VERY wrong!!

I did a quick Google to make sure today's weather is what one technically calls a blizzard:

BLIZZARD: Snow with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibilities of 1/4 mile or less, for an extended period of time (eg. > 3 hours).

Let's see, the general consensus from the weather sites is that the wind in the cities nearest me was up to 50mph. I suspect they were even stronger here, because my little town has no trees or anything to act as windbreaks, but regardless, 50mph winds are CRAZY! I know they don't register on the hurricane or the tornado scales (well, F-0 on the tornado scale is "up to 72mph"), but it WOULD be enough to call it a tropical storm if it were, in fact, a tropical storm (it's not). Anyway, so 50mph wind, and the average temperature today was somewhere around 28deg F, but with the windchill factor, they say it "feels like" 13deg. Oh, and let's not forget the SNOW (aka ice daggers that will blind you if you open your eyes too wide!). It snowed in various degrees today, somehow always managing to dump whenever I had to run from my car to a building or vice versa. This morning, when I had to go literally around the corner from the board of education office to an elementary school, the snow was coming down SO heavily and the wind was SO crazy, that one and a half minutes was terrifying. I could barely see 10ft in front of the car!

So, winds in excess of 35mph? CHECK!
Visibilities of 1/4mi or less? CHECK!
Extended period of time? CHECK!! (at least since it woke me up at 5am and it's still going strong at 8pm)

It's a BLIZZARD!!!
My first one! If it wasn't so loud and throwing ice against my windows and making scary noises, it might be kind of exciting.


Definitely on the downside, I couldn't go to karate tonight because I figured a 20min drive in this weather with my snow-driving skills would be certain death. I hope the weather's better next week!

Kakunodate/Tazawako, Akita City, and Matsushima Bay

Okay, so this is part 2 of Jessie and Joaquin's visit. We drove on the ridiculously uncool icy/snowy roads into the mountains to see Kakunodate and its samurai street (which I think I've posted pictures of before...). Before continuing to Lake Tazawa, we stopped to buy some chains for my snow tires, which helped some. Anyway, the lake is in the mountains and was therefore surrounded by TONS of snow (maybe that's relative, but from a Californian perspective anyway). Click here to check out my visit to Kakunodate and Tazawako in September for a comparison.

Let's see, we also stopped by Akita City to check out the "castle ruins" (a re-built guard tower and a gate).

Then we headed over the mountains to the Pacific coast to Sendai and Matsushima Bay. Matsushima is known as one of Japan's three most beautiful sites, and I can see why. There are over 250 islands/islets in this bay, and many contain Buddhist and/or Shinto shrines, sculptures carved into the island rocks, caves, and other markings from the centuries of monks and pilgrims going there to pray. It was pretty amazing. There's also what's considered the "best" temple in northern Japan - one which was built in 830 (the buildings standing now were rebuilt in the 1600s). It makes you marvel at human ingenuity.

Anyway, after some all-you-can-eat Thai food and crashing at my friend's place in Sendai, I sent Jessie and Quin off to Tokyo to catch their flight home, and I headed back to Akita. It was a really good visit. I hope they had as much fun as I did!

Picture time!

Sliding around on the streets of Kakunodate

Living the samurai life.

Lake Tazawa

Okay, let's compare - gate in Januarygate in September!

Lady of the Lake

Akita City Castle Ruins (guard tower)

Akita City from the castle grounds

View of the Japanese Alps from the bullet train to Sendai.Caves in Matsushima

I was there!

Carved tablets in a cave... I don't know what they said, but I'm sure it was cool stuff.

That's Basho! He's one of the most famous Japanese poets of all time and he spent some time in Matsushima writing about its beauty. He liked it so much, he's still chilling here, apparently.

Caves! They were so cool they looked fake.

Right out of Indiana Jones or something.

Tomb Raider, anyone?

17th century Japanese architecture is neat.

The sun sets on Matsushima Bay

...and we go out for Thai in Sendai! This is Joaquin's third plate!

THE END!!

Time Warp 2008!

I need to do some catching up on the haps in December, but that's on hold for now. I'm going to post some of the pics from my sister and Joaquin's (her boyfriend) visit so far. They're going to be here until Monday. We spent three days in Tokyo, and the rest of the time here in Akita with all the snow. Check it out!

First night - Sensoji at night in the rain

Meiji Jingu

Goofing off in the park around the temple.

Gateway to the Meiji Temple

Jessie met some koi in a park near Yasukuni Shrine

Out for a walk in the park - Kitanomaru Park (I think?)

Joaquin got some "habanero soup" from the vending machine.

Sensoji again with no rain.

Joaquin's first ramen in Japan. He liked it!

This is good so I won't forget when I went to the Tokyo Tower - 2007! (It says 2008 now)

Daytime in Ueno Park.
In front of a fountain in Ueno Park.

New Year's Day! We went to the Namahage Museum, and Joaquin got to dress up.

Eating some New Year's mochi, pounded by Namahage demons!

Snow?! At the beach???

These were all at the tip of the Oga Peninsula. (click here to see it in the summer)

A random park near one of my schools. We stopped to play around.

Snowball fight!

We went for a hike around the little lake near my house (I posted pictures I took with my phone of it in the fall).

Coming soon... pictures of our visit to Kakunodate and Lake Tazawa (LOTS OF SNOW!).