Thoughts

Hello again everyone! Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I was thinking about all you guys during Christmas, that was my first Christmas away from home, it really made me homesick. I miss you all! However, I've got some good friends here to be with, so it's not terrible by any means. ^_^
I had Christmas dinner with a friend and her family, and it was phenomenal. For the Japanese, Christmas eve is more important than Christmas day - I never had that explained to me so that I could really understand it, but all the big dinners happen on Christmas eve. On actual Christmas, the price of Christmas cakes and all drops sharply, because everyone's already eaten all the treats they want the night before. Slightly strange, but whatever. Here are some photos from the dinner party:

The general spread. Note the tree and flowers in the background - They gave me the flowers as a Christmas present, and they're almost as big as their tree. Ye gods. Anyway, the spread was great. Not what I was used to, but great. Roast chicken, Nabe (Japanese soup with a lot of stuff in it), french fries, and sushi. Hey, when in Rome.

The chicken - presentation is so important in Japan, they even made the chicken wear a bow. They even put lettuce, lemon, and strawberry borders around the platters of french fries. Yeesh.

The Christmas cake we ate. These things are maybe 6 inches in diameter, and they're pretty pricey (a decent one runs around 30 dollars), but they are made with the highest quality ingredients, and the strawberries on top alone probably cost 6 dollars. Strawberries are hard to produce this time of year, and the demand for perfect strawberries for Christmas cakes and whatnot drives the price way up. They made the setting look and taste great, though. The cake was delicious.

On actual Christmas day, I didn't really do much, it was kind of quiet. My folks had sent me a butt-kicking care package with some books, DVD's, newspaper clippings, and mixes for Jambalaya and Gumbo (a bit hard to come by in Japan), so I spent the day taking advantage of all of those. My folks and I tried to get a webcam system up and running, but it wasn't to be on that day - you know how those things are, when you're trying to install them. Well, imagine that, but with all the documentation in Japanese. I did eventually get it working, though - I'm on skype now with the webcam and everything - name is Jefferson Thomas Caffery - jeff.caffery@gmail.com. Video phones... The future is NOW, man!

Oh, by the way, one more MAD important thing that happened, a little before Christmas (although I kind of consider it a cosmic Christmas present, and among the best presents I've ever gotten, at that): I GOT A CAR!! um. For some reason, blogger is being uncooperative about uploading images right now, I'll try to post one a bit later. But anyway, having a car is KEY. I can now trek it to Maebashi and Takasaki pretty easily, and mount Haruna is within easy reach for camping in the Summertime, and you know, it makes grocery shopping and going to onsen and pretty much everything a whole heck of a lot easier. Good times, all in all. It's a Suzuki Alto, I'd never heard of the brand before (I've never heard of a LOT of the models of cars they have here in Japan), it's a small little K-car, but it does the job nicely. The steering wheel is on the right, which still kind of throws me.

I got a heck of a lot of vacation time over the holiday - something like 17 days. That's definitely one of the perks of being an ALT working for my company - we get the same holidays as the students. The rest of the teachers (the REAL teachers ^_^) don't get nearly as much vacation time. Being a teacher is a serious responsibility in Japan, and they are expected to come in a lot to prepare lesson plans for the next session, and grade exams from the last session, and plan and prepare and improve... but there's not a heck of a lot of that that I can do. Oh, darn.

Just something at random: over here, they have started selling a pita with three pieces of chicken and weird vegetables in it at McDonalds. They call it Pita Mac. PITA here standing for Pain In The Ass. This is a poorly-conceived creation, be glad it hasn't made it to the states, or if it has, avoid it. However, I can't complain about the fries, they are always, always perfect. Can't beat the customer service and attention to detail by the fast food guys around here. However, they can only work with what they're given, and you can't turn a Pita Mac into a silk purse.

Another post coming extremely soon. Like, in the next 2 hours.

Christmastime among the Japanese

Hey all! Once again, I realize it's been a while since I posted, but I'll skip the standard apology and go right into new stuff, because it's really interesting. Yesterday, we had a Christmas Enkai for all the Assistant Language Teachers in Gunma, and it was a blast!!

First, a little background on Christmas in Japan. This is definitely, noticeably, the Christmas season when you turn on the TV or are shopping in a commercial district, same as in America, but I guess the difference is, when you get into the residential areas, you can't really tell. The typical thing to do on Christmas if you're Japanese is to either stay at home with the family if you're married, or if you're young and single, it's a nice holiday to go out on a romantic date. If you're of the first persuasion, a really common thing is to get Kentucky Fried Chicken for Christmas dinner, for reasons no one has been able to clearly explain to me. Perhaps that was the chain that first made a really big deal of decorating restraunts for Christmas in Japan. It's a bit of a mystery. It looks to me like the Mos Burger (a big gourmet burger chain) has been trying to get in on some of that action, but I don't know how much success they're getting from the "Merry X-Mos" ad campaign. Anyway. The holiday is kind of seen as a romantic holiday for young people in love. Another big difference is that very few businesses and almost no people put up christmas lights and all. From what I've come to understand, an actual Christmas tree is fairly common, but illuminations, as Christmas lights have come to be called here, are pretty rare. Maybe it's that the lights are more expensive, maybe it's because it's a very energy-conscious nation, but the streets are definitely dark (although, admittedly, this is Gunma we're talking about - maybe more towards Tokyo, more people decorate). However, the spirit is still there, I'm doing Christmas-oriented lessons at my elementary school, and the kids are digging it. It's funny - I sometimes see racks of Christmas cards set up in stores, but Christmas card giving is not so much a Japanese thing - New Year's cards are MUCH more in demand. The cards in the racks, therefore, are largely written in English - they're targeting the gaijin market! Very interesting. ^_^

A big thing to do when the Christmas/New Year's holiday comes near is to have an Enkai with your co-workers (or just general friends). An enkai is a dinner party at a Japanese-style restraunt or ryokan (Japanese-style hotel). Sometimes they are just for an evening, but often they are overnight. At these parties, people often let go of all the inhibitions they usually have around the office, and cut loose and eat all the fancy food they want, and drink all the alcohol they want, and the mood is definitely informal and the idea is to improve cameraderie (spelling?) in the workplace. It definitely works, too. The enkai restraunts and fancy ryokans do big business this time of year, and many people have a wonderful time at them. Including us!!

The enkai that I attended Friday evening and Saturday morning was for all the assistant language teachers in the Gunma prefecture. It was advertised for a long time on the Gunma Jet website - www.gunmajet.net - they will probably be posting some photos and whatnot there soon. About 40 ALTs from all over the region attended, some came from pretty far away. It was really convenient for me and the people living in Shibukawa, because the enkai was held at a ryokan by a lake really near Mount Haruna (name literally means "Name of Spring), which is the closest mountain to Shibukawa. It was held at the Yuusuge ryokan, which was a really goregeous place with a nice onsen (ON-sen, Japanese style indoor/outdoor bath and/or hot spring) on premesis, and it was right on the lake. However, to get there, you had to drive up these really narrow, twisting roads in the dark. Now, driving on these roads even in ideal conditions is no picnic - they're pretty narrow, pretty steep, and have a lot of hairpin turns and double-backs. However, in winter, it gets really foggy, and we had trouble seeing five feet in front of the car. Scary times. We were lucky it hadn't snowed yet. We all got there and back safely, though, so enough caution was taken.

Dinner began at 8:30, and we had dinner with karaoke and nomihodai (all you can drink) for two hours. It was definitely interesting times. Here's some photos:


The spread, before everyone got in

The first to sit down, that's Diana smiling at the camera

Each place setting was the same, and each one was superb.

The group at my table. For those of you unfamiliar with ryokan etiquette, each ryokan has its own unique style of Yukata (relaxing robe). One of the first things you do when you get to your room is change into your yukata, and you stay in that all evening. We didn't just all randomly decide to wear the same thing.

The group starts to spread out a little, and the drink starts to flow more freely. That's Jonas, me, and CJ from left to right. CJ is a total ham when it comes to karaoke. Fun times. We started with Christmas carols, moved on to 70's classics (Get Down Tonight, Jungle Boogie, etc.) and from there, whatever fun.

A general idea of the scope of the party

The karaoke becomes more animated. CJ and, um, I think that's Christine are early casualties.

We also had a secred santa gift exchange - these were some of the gifts.

After we finished dinner and karaoke, everyone went to the onsen and relaxed for a bit. The party lasted far into the night, but onsen tends to relax me to the point of sleepiness, and I was an early casualty. I only lasted until about 1:00.

This is the view of Lake Haruna, taken from the window of our room.


A little floating dock on the lake




Chau, Rebecca (?) and me

The outside of the onsen

Well, that was pretty much our time. It was an absolute blast.

I did find out one very interesting thing on my way up Mount Haruna, on the roads with all those narrow, steep twists and turns. I used to watch an anime series called Initial D, which is a series about illegal street racing in the mountains of remote Japan, very cool, very well done. Much drifting is done around steep mountain turns, very suspenseful. I found out that the series is based on THE TOWN I LIVE IN!! It's based in Gunma. The mountain that the main character races on all the time is called Akina (literally, "Name of Autumn"), which is a deliberate misnomer of Haruna. The town the characters live in is called "S-city," and it's pretty obviously Shibukawa. The opposing racing club is called the Akagi Red Suns, and Akagi is a mountain that's, like, right over there, I see it every day. The main character works his day job at an Eneos gas station, and there's an Eneos RIGHT BY MY HOUSE. It could be the one! There was even Initial D merchandise for sale in the ryokan we stayed at. I call that pretty darn funny. However, after driving on that road, I have a new respect for how INSANE street racing is. Apparently, there are still many kids who go up on that mountain to drift, but the local government installed speed bumps and speed strips as a preventative measure. Interesting stuff. Here's some links about Initial D, if you want to know more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_D

http://www.crunchyroll.com/showseries?id=60

By the way, I'll be posting more about where I work and what I do, but I can't really send photos, since the principals might have issues with photos of the kids being seen on the internet, where anyone can look. Therefore, if you want to see pics of the places I work and the kids and events therein, please post a comment to the blog or send an e-mail to jeff.caffery@gmail.com, and I will verify who you are and send out a mass e-mail to everyone with many pics. Hopefully this will work.

It was awesome to hear from you, Charles, Aunt Suzy, Trent. Have a happy holidays! Charles, you still need to send me your address so I can send you some CC Lemon. My back is feeling much better, for those of you who were worried. Thanks for your concern. I've largely fininshed my Christmas shopping, and I'm going to get a car next weekend (finally), so hopefully things will get easier pretty soon, i.e. I will have more time to blog. We can but hope.

Ja, later everyone!!

Resolution of cliffhanger

Hello again. So, to stop you worrying about yesterday, there was good news and bad news. The good news (REALLY good) is that they didn't find anything wrong with my CT scan. The bad news is that they didn't find anything wrong with my CT scan that would make my back hurt like hell, and they could therefore fix. So, apparently the doctor thinks its just muscle inflammation and that I need to go to an onsen (hot spring) to relax my muscles for a bit. Hey, I can handle that. Therefore, that will be top priority this weekend. Thanks for your concern, I'll stop whining about it now. ^_^

Maybe.