Must Blog or People Will Think I'm Dead

I have been ill for the past couple of days so that's part of the reason I haven't written anything in a while. Also during the school week I don't do much so I don't take pictures. On Saturday we went on a field trip to the south. We went to a pretty unexciting museum about Shirase Nobu, who was born in this area, and the expedition he lead to the Antarctic. They had some very sad looking stuffed penguins, a wooden replica of part of a ship that you could climb up, a vehicle that was driven around in Antarctica that you could get inside of, and an "Aurora Dome" that sounded fun but actually was quite disappointing because the aurora was just projected onto a small spot on the ceiling, not actually all over the dome like they do in the ones that have star shows.

After that was Kanmanji temple with was quite picturesque- lots of nice buildings, statues, trees, and cats. Supposedly there were also Seven Wonders at the Temple, I'm not sure if I saw them all.

Then we went to Mount Chokai, the second highest in the Tohoku Region, that is the northern region of Honshu- one the last to be thoroughly consolidated into the country and always considered rural. It was very beautiful, the weather was perfect a nice breeze and a cloudy sky. The view was wonderful, everything looked so small.
Gotta say I loved the little tiny windmills on a distant hill. I also like the very clear way the light reflected off of the Sea of Japan and showed how it rippled.
This is me and a group of my friends, there had been several pictures taken already and I didn't feel like being in anymore, but they wouldn't let me leave, so I just lay down.
We went to a local farm after the mountain, Tsuchida Farms which was very proud of its Jersey cows. I didn't see any cows but they did have two sheep on display. The farm was off on the hills where the windmills were, there was one very close in fact. I sat on the deck of the visitor area and ate delicious rich flavored ice cream, that was how it was described to us repeatedly by one of the trip leaders, it seems that most ice cream in japan is soft serve style, which is fine with me. There was a very lovely view from the farm, but sadly my camera's batteries had died at the shrine. All of the pictures I have inserted were taken from others, since mine are trapped on my camera.The red farm buildings with the rusted tin roofs made me quite nostalgic for Grand Chenier.

After the farm we went to a sake factory, Nobori Kura, which was built in 1902 and had very lovely buildings and a nice traditional garden in a courtyard that was visible from the entrance hall. This brewery has been designated Tangible Cultural Property by the government. I learned that they only brew sake when it is colder, usually from November to Febuary, and that the part that makes it ferment is some sort of mold that they grow on the rice, which they do in a cedar lined room filled with steam, and then bake it. After this rice koji is made it is mixed with water and rice in big vats where it is heated and turned into porridge. After sitting for at least three weeks it is put through a machine that presses the fluid out, which is then the bottled final product. The other left over is used to make pickles, pickles made out of a great number of different types of vegetables. I bought some sake, a lower priced bottle that was featured because it had won of awards. It is quite tasty, but I don't really know much about sake. I find myself wondering what the different between my bottle and the $150 bottle was flavor-wise, is it really ten times more delicious?

Well now I really should go do home work, since I slept through the rest of the weekend.

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Struggling

It's been hard for me to feel like blogging, all those complex emotions have been making it difficult to sit down and write about all of the good things that are going on right now. Last Saturday I went to Kakunodate, an old samurai village east of Akita, for their last festival of the fall, I'm still not sure what the name of the event was. It was very picturesque- really old houses and everyone dressed in their special outfit for the festival. It was a sort of community event that you only get from long standing tradition- each neighborhood had it own special float and clothing design and people worked together to haul these massive things down to a central location and then ram them together. It kind of made me think of a very wholesome and ancient Mardi Gras, without the free plastic stuff. There was all sorts of great festival food and all the usual kinds of games you see in the anime. I especially enjoyed my conically folded crepe filled with cream and blueberry sauce and crunchies- I could have gotten a fancier one with all kinds of fruit but I got tired of standing there sounding out katakana like an idiot. Another one of their great local specialties is kiritanpo or new rice on a stick, I happen to have a picture of my friend with one:
Pictures really speak better than words when it comes to describing a locale and it's sights, therefore I will just add some pictures.
This was my favorite float and it was the first one to do battle with a rival. I took a couple of short videos of the crashing, but the quality was bad, so I will just explain. Two floats faced each other, there were girls on the front deck of the float, directly below and in front of the figures, there was wild Japanese-style fluting and drumming and the two girls would dance gracefully, in unison, using their fans. After sufficient fan dancing had been done, two men would stand up and incite the pushers of the float with cheers and such, then they would ram into each other as hard as the could two or three times, and then the whole process would be repeated. I don't know how many times it was done, but I guess they stopped when sufficient damage had been done- every so often I saw a guy go by carrying nice, fresh, splintered chunks of wood from the direction of the battle.
I really liked the middle girl's golden hair ornament, it was like a rope, but it made me think of antlers. I saw another girl with a thinner silver and green rope tied into the shape of a phoenix in her hair, but I couldn't get a picture. The woman in front and on the left also had a neat hair style. This village had many women and men with more interesting, and slightly 80's, hair than I have seen anywhere else, there were even guys with pompadours. One woman's hair was piled on top of her head, and fizzy/poofy and sprayed with glitter- that also made me think of Mardi Gras.Even the kids get to get into the spirit- this boy has the name of his neighborhood shaved into the back of his head. I'm only a little surprised his family let him do that.

I find the dichotomy of Japan highly amusing- glued to technology while keeping traditions alive.
Kakunodate is a small place, I walked from one end to the other during my day there and it was a gently meander of a walk, with lots of back-tracking to look for my many straying comrades. Over twenty people from AIU went there together, mainly international students, but we broke up so that there were usually fewer than 7 of us in the same place at once. I wandered around and often wound up losing the people I was with only to discover a new set of people a little further in a different direction. I saw a few other foreigners at the festival but they mostly just gave me funny looks and kept to themselves- I had noticed that many foreigners have a tendency to acknowledge one another slightly, a sort of automatic recognition of someone living in a state similar to your own. I can't just play it cool and blend in here, I will always be highly visible and an object of scrutiny- with or without the purple hair.
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Inescapable Sorrow

Lynn Pierre McCall, was my grandfather. I love him and will never forget him. His favorite memory was riding horses with his grandfather. He used to take me riding when I was little, now I regret having not ridden more with him while I could. I wish I had a better picture of him with me.

The Life of the Semi-Literate

Yesterday I learned a couple of interesting things about Akita. Firstly, when a typhoon approaches the island from the Pacific side this area tends to get more humid and hot. We had been going along fairly pleasantly with cool, slightly humid weather with clouds and occasional rain, but the weather has indeed turned hot and humid because there is a typhoon approaching in the Pacific. Right now it is really windy and the dorms are filled with the moaning of high wind passing over its various openings. woooooooo

I went to Aeon to get vital fruits and vegetables, as well as bread, and along the way I was noticing the many interesting things there are to see just over the course of a small distance. I will probably never be able to get a decent picture of any of them because the route we take has no margin that I could walk in, so even if I got motivated to go for a long walk I couldn't see these sights safely on foot. There are a couple of large pillars, like the ones that support overpasses, in a valley that the road curves through on the hillside. There are no signs that any road was ever being built in the direction of these pillars, and there isn't much of anything to be seen on the other side of the valley, so I really see no reason why they would build a bridge over it. Although, Japanese construction is very unobtrusive and tidy, so it could be coming but they just haven't disturbed the landscape yet, and the pillars could have been built carefully so as to not disrupt the area around them. I saw an example of road maintenance in Tokyo near the first hostel, which is what led me draw that conclusion about Japanese construction. They had to dig up the sidewalk for some reason on the corners of a couple if blocks, but they did it with one small, purple backhoe and the rest by hand. They carefully cordoned off a lane to make into a sidewalk detour and rolled out a little labeled green plastic walkway and had people to conduct the pedestrians and automobiles through the intersection. The workers were mostly older Japanese men and they were picking up the brick for the sidewalk, dusting them off and neatly stacking them on pallets. At night everything would be cleaned up, put away, and covered, so people could use the sidewalk when there was no construction. They simply covered up the exposed dirt and holes and unrolled black plastic textures mats. At AIU right now they are beginning two new buildings but you hardly notice it, except for some smaller noises and the fact that there is a purple backhoe on campus. I'm rather taken by these backhoes, they are very cute: rounded and small. I shall have to take a picture of it.

Anyway the point I was actually trying to get to was about the abundant cedar forests in this area. According to my Business Culture teacher there isn't much logging here because it's too expensive, imported wood is cheaper, so they don't bother cutting trees here. I am amazed by this- how can something so big shipped from overseas be cheaper? The answer probably lies in governmental policy and possibly something about the hilly terrain and transportation, but I can't make any assertions about those two.
Flowers I found cut down in a garden area across the street from the school. I need to ask my roommate, but I think that a lot of people have allocated plots in a communal gardening area. On the first day I was here I saw the high hedge around this place and the numbered gridded sign and I wondered if it was a weird kind of maze, but then the next day all of the tall grass and weeds had been cut down and some of the plots looked like they had been rototilled. Now the garden has been plants and it is mostly covered in sheets of black plastic.
Amusing name, ne?

World Wide White Bread

As far as I can tell white bread is the bread of choice here. Only once have I seen some slightly speckly bread serve. Tomorrow however I will find myself some multi-grain bread because I have been told it exists at Jusco. I love bread but the white bread is really getting to me. I will also buy Nutella so that even if I sleep through breakfast I will be able to have delicious morning toast. Alright enough bread ranting, I'm sure after a while I will grow accustomed to the lack.

Time for some random pictures
A very stern warning from the gates to the Daibutsu.
The Daibutsu of Kamakura, not to be confused with the really Daibutsu of Nara, which is much larger but I have been told that this one is the more scenic. I really liked all of the sculpture that was placed around him- flowers and stone lantern and such.
The Daibutsu was also an excellent opportunity to photograph people without their knowledge. I thought this woman was really cute with her big floppy hat, embroidered shirt, and bell bottoms.
Japanese girls and women really love to pose for pictures. They fixed their makeup before their friend took their picture with a cellphone camera. Found out today that you can get a phone here with 5 megapixels, as well as an antenna for crystal clear tv reception.

I have been very satisfied with my classes today. I decided I was going to join the Japanese Business Culture class, and it was very good. I think it will mostly be cultural, which is exactly the sort of thing I want. The Japanese are all business, so what better way to learn about them as a society?

A Quick One

The Sky Dome sports thing and a very tidy field. When I saw the bridge I took this picture from I thought surely I would find a stream and more trees beneath it, but of course not. This is Japan, I did find the stream and it was off to the right contained within well made cement banks.
Down the hill!
Need to get reading and get to bed. I had my first real classes today. Japanese Language and Culture will be very interesting and requires lots of reading, but it seems like a pretty unique course. Social Problems in the US is also going involve some reading, but it's on topics I am interested in, like the economic gap between rich and poor, healthcare, trivialization of electoral politics, etc. I still need to chose one more class I think, but tomorrow I will go to meet with an adviser, so hopefully I will get some help.

More catching up to do

Well I've basically been wasting time now that we've finished orientation, getting to know people and the area. I have made two exploratory expeditions into Akita city so far. It is quite a lot of hassle to get there from here because it means coordinating bus and train times for outbound and in-bound trips. The city seems nice, the first day it was rainy so I didn't venture very far. This is a picture from last night when we went into Akita to do karaoke, but ultimately wound up going home again.
This was an ashtray in a restaurant that we dined at that night. All of the dish ware was lovely, but I left that restaurant feeling cheated because of some extra charge that I didn't understand... maybe it was for our large party (seven people)?
And now for more Tokyo pictures- This was taken in Shinjuku Chou Koen- the park of fountains,
huge crows (this picture doesn't really do it justice but it's the best I have),
homeless people and their homes,
and a rather handsome shrine that was closed on Sunday.
It also had the most decorative spouts I have seen for the cleansing water thing, and they were high-tech, they turned on when we approach the fount.
And now for more buildings.
And the band, Minx Zone, that was playing outside a movie theater in Shinjuku.
This is the shot I took in the Isetan food department, I felt kinda weird about taking this picture. I guess because it would seem strange to see some do something similar.
I think I'll call it quits for tonight. Up next will be pictures from Kamakura. Many pictures from Kamakura. Tomorrow is the first day of classes but the only one I have doesn't start until 7pm. I don't know if I'm going to take a Japanese language class. The one they wanted to put me in is a really low level and would take up 6 credit hours, it wouldn't count for anything if I took it, and besides there are many other very interesting sounding classes that I could take. Right now I am signed up for Japanese Language and Diversity, Comparative Politics (US, UK, Japan), Social Problems in the US, a class about manga, tea ceremony, and calligraphy. That puts me at 18 hours. Next week will probably lead to some schedule changes as I figure out what will be worthwhile for me to do. As usual there is more that interests me than I have time for.

PS. Here is a link for a video of the sort of BMX riding I saw at that club in Tokyo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mKa4xRYUfU