Moving Home

Sadly I had to change my blog site as 'Blogger' has told me I reached my photo limit. Mean! So I swtiched to wordpress which has unlimited photo uploading. Nice!
My new site is

http://journeyofjapan.wordpress.com/

I have painfully transferred everything over but will leave this site up and running so the link will always be here! But from now on I'll be posting on the new site!!

So long blogspot!

Shinkansen Festival

New Aomori-Shi Shinkansen station

The Shinkansen comes to Aomori in 30 days, Aomori is very, very, excited. The station will be located very close to Nishi Koko so the school was asked to participate in a festival last Thursday. I went along with the first graders to watch various dance performances, one group of old ladies doing a strange trance dance, tiny kiddies in a brass band club, and a group of traditional Nebuta dancers, the mayor made some speeches too. We were supposed to make a huge human sign, saying 30 but it rained so that got cancelled. Which was sad but instead they gave us vouchers to buy treats at the stands, great success!
Thirty days to go!





せん Restaurant

River Fish, Prawn Cakes, Scallops and Vegetables

Friday night was another amazing night for Japanese food. My good friend Atsushi takes me to dinner so he can practise his English. It's a win win situation for both of us. I get to eat fantastic traditional food while he gets a free English lesson.

Sashimi, the prawn part is insanely slimey

This was a small little restaurant run by a charming Japanese couple, I was the first foreigner to eat there so they swarmed me watching me closely after every single bite, (the reaction after your first bite is crucial to them). I almost had to concentrate harder on enthusiastically ‘hmmmming and yuming’ than actually watching what I ate! The food was glorious.

Scallops, Greens, Omellete, champ; Flowers

We now share a love for the Guinness bar and it has become an after dinner tradition.

Guinness

Studio Ghibli

Studio Ghlibli

Studio Ghibli Layout Design exihition is being displayed at AMOMA (Aomori Museum of Modern Art) until early January. I went on Saturday and I have been dreaming Ghibli every since.

I went with Kodama Sensei, the art teacher from Nishi Koko, we have become great friends since she lets me hang out in her Art classes when I’m not busy. She has tiny bits of English so it’s difficult to communicate but surprisingly easy to have fun with her, it is amazing how if you just try hard you can communicate in many other ways, words are not everything.

We spent over two hours walking around viewing these stunning drawings, dating from the early eighties to today. Japan has some seriously talented artist, this is an obvious fact, their style of drawing though is so very different to the European/ American style. They are so beautifully delicate and so extremely cute it would melt your heart.

Unfortunately I couldn’t take any photos but here are some from the internet just in case (like me) you’ve never experienced them before, it will hopefully give you an idea.

These lil dudes are called Kodama just like the Art Sensei!

Kodama Sensei

Stickers of Kodama creatures made by viwers of exhibition

Chanel Friends

It’s nice to have a quiet cute bar to chill out in once in a while with a friend, out of the way of all the fuss and load noises from the city, somewhere with tasty food & drinks. This bar myself and Christy have named ‘Chanel’ the wife of the owner is a beautiful lady who used to work for Chanel in Tokyo but left her job to run this adorable bar in Aomori city. They have become great friends of ours and we adore our little trips here to hang out. Check out their blog which they have posted stuff about us on! It’s all in Japanese but you can still see pictures.


http://blog.livedoor.jp/ginsenhonoca/archives/51608394.html




Birtday champagne from Chanel



The Hot Room

The community centre I use for swimming is a great place to hang out. There is always something strange happening, this week there was flower displays and a photography exhibtion, old men sit outside different rooms and entice you in with biscuits and bananas. It is impossible to say no.

While swimming last Wednesday I met a man who worked in the city hall, he had fantastic English and enjoyed stopping me every few lengths to tell me I had ‘beautiful swim stroke’, what a nice thing to say! He said I was like swam, an animal that looks like it is gliding from above but infact it is secretly very fast. A strange observation that I couldn’t quite get my head around but still seemed like it was ment as a compliment.

Eventually I managed to pull myself away and headed for a quick sauna, (usually I pop in for 10minutes after a swim). I always thought it was odd that every time I entered people would wait a few minutes then quietly excuse themselves, but I had heard that it is quite common for Japanese to do that if foreigners entered and I wasn’t complaining having the place peacefully to myself, (even though they blast a television in the room). After my ten minutes when I was leaving Mr.City Hall man was calling me from the pool. I smiled, bowed and kept waving saying goodbye nice to have met you, secretly trying to run away as the whole pool was watching. He then jumps out of the pool and comes running over. ‘Hannah san man only hot room, MAN ONLY’

Oh dear lord, the embarrassment.

So for a solid two months I have been swimming maybe three times a week, using the sauna 90% of the time…the MENS only sauna.

I laughed, he laughed, the entire pool laughed. I found the womens only today and it just doesn’t feel the same!

Apple Bobbing

A pumpkin I carved with Tesia and Makoto

A bunch of third graders asked me to have a Halloween party after school on Friday, which I was more than happy to accommodate, they made a huge effort to come find me and ask me in English, which blew me away! Not teaching these kids meant I really did not know what to expect, did they want to play games or just chill out, should I dress up or would that be really un-cool? They are about eighteen years old so I tried to think of what I would have wanted when I was in school, which made it worse because there is no way in hell we would have asked for a Halloween party at that age. So I just got loads of sweets, baked some buns (always a safe option), put on a wig and had some games prepared as back up. I also had no idea how many would be coming.


One girl in a witchy hat comes in the door shreaking followed by about 15 others, and lots more shreaking. They unpiled bags of junk and just kept shrieking. I braved the question….do you want to play a game?

The Halloween Team

So we played apple bobbing for about 30mins (which they had never even heard of), they were endlessly entertained by this, then I hung apples from the ceiling and they tried to capture them with their teeth, also endlessly entertained by this game and then we played a solid hour of blind man’s buff. I have to admit I was also endlessly entertained, it was like being 12years old again plunging my head into buckets of freezing water to fetch apples. What really surprised me is the boys that crept in and joined in after much encouragement (boys and girls in Japan do not interact very well at all, at all). I had some teenage girl magazines from Ireland with me which the boys adored and even took home to borrow for the weekend. Could you imagine an 18year old boy in Ireland reading a Mizz magazine?

Apple Games

Clever girls



Narumi








One Hundred Yen

I swim in the local swimming centre at least twice a week, it’s a great laugh nattering with the grannies in the changing room. They refuse to believe I speak no Japanese and I refuse to stop trying to teach them English. So it’s general a complete fumble of sentences where nobody understand anyone but themselves, but it’s great fun, the old ones are always the most entertaining! They usually come in pairs and you can tell by the intensity of their conversations that they are doing some serious gossiping. Sometimes I get the joy of catching the aerobics class in one half of the pool, it’s very tricky to concentrate on my lengths when there 10 or so Obachans (grannies) rocking out to Katy Perry. Dang they got moves!
Last Thursday I headed to the pool after work and arrived up to the counter to stamp my ticket. From when I step into the building they usually welcome me very enthusiastically but this time they were congregating a bit more, strange I thought, but I just kept smiling and saying hello. So one of them hands an envelope to me (I’m really confused here) it had ALT (stands for Assistant Language Teacher) on the front of it, the man keeps saying “locker”, then he opened it and produced a small note with a 100yen coin celotaped to it. So I think they are trying to lend me 100yen for my locker, I keep refusing saying I have loads thanks, I even showed him my wallet. Turns out some cute little Obachan had handed it in last week after I forgot to take it after my swim. They had kept it for at least four days, watching for me to come back. How can this not make you smile, I could not believe it, I was genuinely so shocked at the care and effort that had gone into trying to get me back my 100yen, which is the equivalent of one euro. The guilt of all the euro’s I had ever found in lockers and pocketed washed over me within an instant. Damn these grannies have got some seriously A+ levels of honesty, as well as kick ass hiphop moves.

When I grow up I want to be a Japanese Obachan.

Obachans are like the sun, they brighten up the world with their wisdom!

Ham San Pan Class

Last week was the first of our bread classes. We have set up a group of four (Sonomi, Jacki, Mio and I) and joined the ‘Japan Home Baking school’.


After school we pack our bread baskets and head to Pan Sensei’s house to roll, kneed, fold and tuck!

We baked Ham rolls in heart shapes, Mayo rolls (obviously we made Mayo rolls, Japan is obsessed with Mayonaisse), and bread buns. It’s great being able to bake the bread together with friends, then we have dinner that the sensei cooks for us and we eat it all! Well not all of it, but we pack in a good amount, expanding our bread bellys to prepare for hibernating on snowy days (the first srpinkle of snow fell on tuesday). The rest I brought to the staff room the next day and earned some serious browny points from my co-workers!

It was very interesting to learn about managing the temperature of the water when you are making the dough. It is essential to get the calculations correct so that the yeast can become active. We were pretty horrid at rolling the dough into little balls, it was very hard not to squash them with our clumsy hands, but she said we have weak hands and she will make bread bakers out of us soon! She taught us how to make pretty heart shapes out of the bread so if all else fails and they taste nasty at least they look good! Hannah San got called Ham San by accident and the name stuck for the class, the sensei could not have enjoyed the joke more!

Mio and Jackie with raw and cooked bread!YUM

Learning to shape and cut the dough was tricky

Ham Rolls

The outcome with salad and soup!

Shimokita Penninsula

Another weekend, another fantastic adventure. After work last Friday myself and Jaqueline headed North to visit an ALT (Allie) who lives a 3hour drive away in Kazamaura, (or its easier to remember cuz-yo-mama) She lives in a tiny tiny village along the coast of the Shimokita peninsula of Aomori. She is truly as rural as you can get. We saw monkeys chilling out on the roadside, many many bear warning signs, some crazy deer/goat/wolf things and a few large ferret kind of animal, who knows! Saturday we were up early, it was a glorious Autumn day, the sun was floating in a blue sky but the air was crisp, we headed off from Allie's at about 9.30am and went on a fantastic hike to a waterfall. When we arrived to the start point we headed for a pee stop in the cultural centre which turned out to be a valuable stop. They kitted us out with welly boots (we were unaware that most of the walk is infact wading through a river), we were given several bells to attach to ourselves to scare away the bears, then a spray so if the bears attacked us we had a defense. Although the thought of unscrewing two lids and unhinging the can in enough time to aim and spray in the bears eyes I thought was quite ambitious. They also gave us a walky talky and attempted to give us helmets, but we assured them we would be careful climbers. We hiked to the mountain and back in about 3-4hours, I would be surprised if the whole city couldn’t hear the obnoxious bells ringing all the way with us! The sun crept through the leaves, we skipped around jingling like crazy elves and basked in the beauty of Aomori ‘The Blue Forest’. No bears though.

The bear bells

Most of the hike consisted of hanging onto these ropes!

And wading through the river

Allie climbing through the forest.

We named him 'Wakarimasita'

The Blue Forest

The waterfall

Allie and The Blue Forest

We then ventured to a natural sulphur onsen, which was amazing despite the god awful foul smell. We came out feeling fabulous with silky smooth skin but smelling a little eggy, we then headed to Oma to try and catch the Tuna festival. Unfortunately we spent too long in the egg baths and missed the festival but instead we headed for a drive around the coast. The scenery around the coast was breathtakingly beautiful, vertical rocks pop out of the sea everywhere and pierce the pancake flat calm water. We caught the sunset just in time before heading back to Mutsu for dinner. We finished the day in a rustic little pizza restaurant, resting our legs on the huge oak chairs, we ate ice cream from china cups and reminisced over one of our favourite days in Japan so far.

Flags at the Oma tuna Festival

Oma

A Gay Bear

Sunset over Hokkaido

Little Allie and Large rocks

Dusk