First Temple Experience

Alright, so we went back to Kyoto. We really like it, so I bet there will be many Kyoto updates to come. It helps that it is only 20 minutes away. Last weekend, Dan and I went to the Kyoto National Modern Art Museum. It was really nice, but we got into town too late to do any other museuming. There are alot of cool museums in Kyoto that we plan to see. Monday, we went back to Kyoto with our friends Yoko and Masami. You may remember the name Yoko from past posts, she is our coordinator. Anyway- we had a great time with them and were able to see things we wouldn't have known about.
Even our transportation was a learning experience. We met Yoko and Masami at the bus stop down the street from our house. We had never taken a bus, so she thought it would be good to teach us. We took a bus to Kusatsu station and then headed into the city via the JR(Japan Rail).

Here are the four of us in front of Kyoto station.

Next, we took the subway downtown and found our way to this awesome old market street called Nishiki Market. It was a covered arcade lined with stands selling different prepared foods, local produce, and textiles. We tried some samples- my favorite being the pickled eggplant and the mochi with sweet beans.

Here are some beautiful mushrooms at the Nishiki Market. I was told that they were very expensive, but I couldn't read the signs.

Here is green tea for sale at the Nishiki Market.

Dan and I are getting ready to see our first temple.

This was at the entrance to the temple to wash your hands as you come in.

Me and Yoko enjoying some shaved ice up around Chion-in.

A huge buddhist statue that appeared as we came up the steps to a temple. For adding effect, there was chanting that we could hear in the distance.

This is an awesome traditional street called Sannen-zaka. We walked along streets like this to the next temple.

A beautiful garden that we passed.

This is the main gate to Kiyomizu-dera. It is one of the most famous temples in Kyoto. About 2 minutes after this picture was taken, it stared to pour.

You can bearly see the pagoda poking through the trees. This view is from the main stage at Kiyomizu-dera. We were advised to come back in November, so that we could see the colorful leaves.

Another beautiful view.

This is a fountain at Kiyomizu-dera that pours out spring water and people drink it for good health. Dan and I did not drink it because we didn't want to wait in the line.

We don't have too much planned for this weekend, but we hope to get to Nara, Hiroshima, and Tokyo soon:)

Otsu Festival

On Sunday, we got up and went down the street to see if any of the Ritto half marathon excitement was still going on. The tail end of the race was still coming in and we looked over to see a couple of the finished runners lighting up a smoke. Different from the typical American post race regimin. Anyway-there wasn’t much else going on, so we decided to take the train to Otsu, where we heard there was a multicultural festival. We thought this was funny because as far as we could see Japan had not seemed the least bit diverse to us. Everywhere we go people stare at us. Now I know what Jennifer Aniston must feel like. So- Otsu was a 15 minute train ride away. When we got there, we were amazed at the huge beautiful mountains surrounding the city. We followed the main street down towards the lake. This town is at the very bottom of Biwako(lake Biwa). At the Lakefront park, we found the festival. There was a band on stage playing lound music, multicultural food tents, and information about the festival. Apparently there was a man with mixed Brazilian and Japanese heritage that started the festival and now the area has a lot of people from Peru. To get to the important part of the story: one of the food tents had beef tacos and coronas. The price was the taco, some hotdog like item, and a corona for 500 yen(about 5 dollars). The tacos were awesome. The musical acts were good(one girl sang a song in Enlish). Then there was a parade. It was fine, but halfway through it, it started to down pour. Everyone retreated into the big Biwako center(it was air conditioned and had clean bathrooms). The rain stopped, so we went back out for another taco, but then it started raining again, so at the first break, we put on our rain coats and hurried back to the train station. We had a great time in Otsu.

Here is a view of Biwako across the southern most tip of the lake.

Here is a view looking back at part of Otsu.

People watching the music stage with food tents in the background.

This woman was great. She seemed like a Japanese Ani Difranco.

The band got the crowd to get up and do a fun dance together.

Dan and I enjoying ourselves.




Dan watching the parade.

A view of the mountains after the downpour.

This is the central area to the festival. There were tents all around it.

This is one of many garbage areas. Each bin is labeled with what type of garbage it is for. The first was for plastic, then glass, then cans, then the last two were burnables. The green bucket on the end has a strainer and is where you are supposed to dump any remaining liquid. It is a great system and people actually follow it. There were people maintaining these complex garbage areas throughout the day. They were never overflowing or messy looking.

School

School has been good so far. The English teachers we work with are nice and the kids think we are such novelties, that they pay attention and listen to us. We have basically been creating worksheets to go with lessons and reading things for the classes for pronunciation. There is a lot of down time, since we don’t need too much preparation. The kids leave at 3:25 and the teachers work until 5:00. Dan has taken to reading during that time(he is reading Japanese fiction), but I haven’t been able to bring myself to read my NY bestseller on the job yet. Here are pictures of school.

Kids in the hall. They have a uniform, but they can where their sports uniforms instead. There are boys at this school too, but the girls seem to be more interested in having their picture taken.

This is one of the student bike parking lots. All the students ride their bikes to school- a lot of the staff does too.

This is where the students enter. It is the equivalent to a basement, but it's just inside from the bike area. They keep their inside shoes in the cubbies, take their outside shoes off on the tile, then step up onto the platform to put their inside shoes on.

Here are some camera shy girls.

Kyoto Adventure

Yesterday (Saturday) Dan and I went on our first adventure outside of Ritto by ourselves. It was a success! We got to Kyoto and back with our broken Japanese and our trusty phrasebook. It was great. The train ride there was only about 25 minutes (including the transfer in Kusatsu) and the train ride back was only 20 minutes. We didn’t have much of an agenda, we just wanted to go somewhere, so when we got there, we just wandered around the Kyoto Station area for a while before heading to the Downtown area. We followed a river for a good half hour and made our way to downtown. There were lots of restaurants (with romanji on the menus) and shops that we recognized. The highlight for me was that there was a Benetton and for Dan I think it was the Japanese soccer store. Kyoto was much more modern/western than Ritto. It was much easier to navigate and communicate with people. We found this huge covered arcade mall area with tons of great shops. We found a bar in it where we took a short break with some Kirin beer and edamame beans. We also found a great book store that had a whole section of English books- other countries always conveniently accommodate the Americans. I bought a lonely planet Hiking Japan book at the book store and Dan bought a Japan National soccer jersey at the soccer store. Overall we had an excellent first experience in Kyoto (I must give credit to our friends the Willoughbys, for the Kyoto book they gave us came in very handy). The city was very big, but manageable. We haven’t even begun to explore everything there, but the impression we got was that it reminded us of San Francisco because of the smaller old architecture and the different districts and neighborhoods. So here are some pictures from yesterday:

This is Kyoto Station. It is the cities main train train station and is huge. It has an underground mall, an attached department store, hotel and tons of other stuff.

This is Dan and I by the Kama gawa. It is a large shallow river that flows through the city. You can see the mountains in the distance. All of the towns and cities that we have seen are surrounded by mountains.

This is another view of the city with the Kama gawa and the mountains.

This is me purchasing a biru from a street vending machine. It still felt kind of wrong.

This is Dan taking in the Shinkyogoku covered arcade. It was endless. We were in there a really long time and didn't see half of it.

Moyer Sensei

So, we have made it through our first week in Japan! We have internet, a bank account, national health insurance, bills in our name, and we even have a "seal". It is a small round stamp with a Japanese character that means Moyer.We are supposed to stamp it on official documents instead of a signature. Things are subtly different with the whole gender thing. When we went for our bank account we said we wanted only one. From that point on I was invisible. They addressed Dan with everything and put everything in has name. We were going to get a cell phone, we filled the paper work out and everything, but then realized it would only be used to call Yoko. The first few days were easy because we had Yoko with us the whole time. Things got a little scarier when she stopped meeting us at our gate every morning. Because Ritto is a smaller town, nothing is in romanji(roman characters), which makes it difficult on Dan and I, not knowing much Japanese let alone Japanese characters. Since it is our first weekend we may try to take a train(all by ourselves) to Kusatsu or if we are feeling extra crazy Kyoto. Stay tuned to see how this unfolds!
Also- Dan is writing on his website: www.van38.com and he has an awesome account of the cell phone experience.

our house

Hello again. Konbanwa! We are starting to figure a few things out now, such as how much we need to learn Japanese and how much better of a garbage system they have here. Everyday of the week they pick up a different type of garbage that you put in a shed(the sheds are located on every few streets). One type is burnable(paper/food),one is plastics, one is metals... Everything is burned or recycled. It's quite wonderful. This happens everywhere too. There aren't garbage cans around for people to throw things in. And the schools are just as strict. There are strainers by the sinks for food remnants and the milk cartons must be rinsed and cut apart so that they lay flat in the recycle crate. Anyway- here are some pictures of the house. The shower room is one big shower with the option to soak. The kitchen is huge and has everything we need. The wood work everywhere is really nice and I was told that the wall hanging
is a famous painting. Anywhere with tetami mats we can't wear shoes.

Good Luck To Us!

Ohayo gozaimasu! We made it to Japan and are finally relaxing a little bit. The week leading up to the trip was so crazy with trying to cram in last visits and good byes. We are going to miss everyone, but I'm sure the year will fly by.

So- that was the lead up to saying that we actually enjoyed the 14hr flight! It went really smoothly and we were able to relax. Also, they gave us a surprising amount of food, which included one excellent gourmet brownie. When we arrived in Osaka and got through customs, Yoko(our coordinator), and an another school board person were right there with a big colorful sign. We hurried to catch a train and took it through Kyoto and Otsu to Kusatsu, where we stayed in a hotel for the night. It was a nice hotel and we slept really well that night. The next morning we woke up super early and had green tea in our room before going down to breakfast. The buffet had both Japanese(rice and fish) and more western stuff(eggs, bread, meat). We ate both. Yoko met us later and brought us here to our house in Ritto. Ritto seems to be around the size of Ann Arbor, maybe smaller because it ends at the mountains and doesn't sprawl like towns in the US seem to do. After she showed us around our house(very cool and very big), she took us shopping which is a 5-10 minute walk into town. We bought some groceries to get us started and she showed us where everything we might need will be. We took a break for lunch and then she came back on her bike. We followed her on the house bikes(there were conveniently two here already, so we didn't have to buy them) on the routes to the three schools we will be working at. One is super close and the others are around 20 minutes on bikes. We found out that we will be at separate schools and rotate through each one every four weeks or so. For Dinner Yoko brought her husband over and we walked about a block down the street to the Yakitori restaurant. They let us pick the type of food and we picked that because we thought it was safe- we were wrong. It was good, but I thought Yakitori was just chicken skewers. They ordered us tons of different stuff: chicken insides, chicken skin, chicken cartilage, ground chicken(like little chicken meatballs), chicken with plum sauce, regular chicken, eggplant, and mushrooms. Everything was grilled on skewers except a special treat that the chef brought out for us on the house. It was the little meatball ones but they were raw! I think Yoko and her husband felt obligated to eat them(it was their first time too) but I told them that raw chicken was kind of against our whole belief system. We had beer and did the Kanpai cheers thing- It was really fun. My favorite Yakitori was the cooked chicken meatball things. For the record we definately could not have gone there without them. All we would have been able to order was the beer. There was some English in Osaka and Kusatsu, but not in Ritto. Good luck to us!

Today is a free day for us so I will take pictures of our palace and post them soon. This is very fun but crazy!