Hakodate

Well this year for my Christmas holidays I travelled around the south west side of Hokkaido to the city of Hakodate. Unlike Tokyo, Nara and Kyoto this city is somewhat young in age, having only been colonized by the Japanese in the past 150 years. So it's kind of like the Canada of Japan. Hakodate before was inhabited by a northern native people called Ainu, and then like Canada the pushy foreigners:Russians, British and Japanese came to claim it for their own. In the end the Japanese won obviously. So Hakodate is an interesting city to visit for its history and old colonial style buildings. The draw back to my holiday however was that it snowed like CRAZY, like it did in Canada this past Christmas season. So it was not only a mini holiday but also somewhat of an adventure.

This first picture is from my first day when it wasn't snowing and the sun was out. The beaches here are really spectacular, so I kind of lucked out with being able to capture this nice shot. On the second day, the 27th of December, is when the snow came out in full force. My plan for this day was to first head to a sento (public bath house, like a hotsprings) in the morning to warm up and then head to Hakodate mountain to see the famous view all my Japanese teachers have been gushing on about. The sento was ok, it was cheap, not beautiful but still relaxing and warm. Which at this point was my first priority. When I was heading to the mountain I found this great Shinto Shrine on the way which is where my next two pictures come from. On New Years at midnight families visit these shrines to pray for the coming new year. It's kind of like going to mass on Christmas day. The monks hit a gong 130 times (I might be wrong on the number) but anyhoo they hit it a lot to chase off the bad luck from the past year and welcome the new year. It's kind of like us hitting pots and pans. Who knows maybe we get that from the Japanese?

After the sento I headed to the mountain where I took a fun 5 minute cable car ride up to the top. The picture on the right is of me at the top. The view looking down in interesting too because Hakodate is shaped like a thin slice of land, so on one side is the Pacific ocean and the other side is the Sea of Japan. There are lots of great trails to go hiking on once you're at the top, but with the weather, plus me being a wuss when it comes to outdoor activity, I instead decided to just take my pictures, have some lunch overlooking the nice view, and then go on my merry way.

The next day I travelled to the resort part of town where the fancy smancy onsens are located. I found one that was really nice for only 1000 yen so like $10 CAD. It was a lot nicer that my sento the day before. The perfect remedy for cold feet that have been walking in lots and lots of snow. After my onsen, I headed to this indoor green house that had a bunch of tropical plants and flowers. It also had the famous Nagano monkeys that I really wanted to see when I headed there this summer. They're snow monkeys though, so this summer they were up high in the mountains so obviously I didn't see any. But this place had a little outdoor zoo deal for them with their own little onsen. It was a natural one too, I could smell the minerals wafting up. So some of them were in their little houses eating, like this first picture, and the others were lounging in the onsen keeping warm. In the wild they live in the mountains and use the natural onsen pools to keep warm, so like this but not in the ugly artifical setting. So onsens are not only a part of the Japanese peoples lives, but also the monkeys too.

At this point I have less than a month to go until I'm home, I'm excited!

Snow Whito

Ok first off, I know I've really pretty much ignored my blog for the past couple of months. Part of that has been gearing up for Christmas, part of it is that I'm coming home in a month (woo), and the last part is just my own laziness. But my play really needs to be commented on: Snow White or Snow Whito as the children like to say.

This year for my Christmas Hapiokai deal for Hikari, Encho Sensei (the principal) asked me to put on an English play with the oldest children at the kindergarten (nencho gumi). This is the first time either one of the kindergartens has done this, so there was a little stress going into it from me and her. But I'm proud to say that the children performed wonderfully, and the end result was fantastic. It actually was lots of fun too. My experience in Taiwan was a little different. Similar format, the children were expected to have a conversation component and then song and dance. But the excecution of the two was very different. Here in Japan the children still practiced like crazy, but it was always presented as a fun thing for us to do, and at the end of each rehearsal the children were praised for their efforts. In Taiwan the children were told how poorly they had tried, and how they were expected to perform a lot better the next time. So lots of anxiety felt by the children, as well as the teachers. Anyhoo, enjoy the videos, I think they're halarious and super cute. I'm not sure how all of you will see it, but this is Japan so even with them just saying a little English is a huge accomplishment. There's also a guest appearance from this very famous blonde actress that we were so lucky to acquire on such short notice, who played the part of the evil queen. There was no over acting on her part at all....

I've also been lucky enough to go to a hockey game here in Tomakomai with Ai and Jen, which was fun even though I'm not a huge hockey fan, but I must say I felt closer to my Canadian heritage for it. And it's been snowing like crazy here, as I know it's been in Canada as well. So I've been trying to take advantage of what winter has to offer and enjoy my last little bit of time in Japan. This Christmas my plans are to head to Hakodate for 4 days starting on boxing day, and explore Hokkaido a little more while I'm here. Check out some historical sights, and go to a couple more onsens (hot springs).

But other exciting news that I just touched on above is that I'm coming home!!! Yeah, Lindsay is offically returning to Canada. Exciting stuff. My plane ticket is booked for February 2nd at 4:30pm, and with the time change I'll be heading into Vancouver on February 2nd at 11:30am. So I'm regaining my lost day. My plans are to visit many of you and be a slug for about 2 or 3 weeks, get readjusted back into Canadian culture and then jump head first into the real world of Vancouver life. So find a new job, apartment, man, the whole shabang. My plan is to work full-time until September and then start my part-time Continuing Studies course to become an immigration officer. Big changes again, but I'm ready to come back home. Japan has been fantastic, and I'm going to miss so many things about it, the children, people, language, and especially the food, oh how I love Japanese cuisine. But I'll just incorporate a lot of those things into my Canadian life. Which means me having to start cooking more, and we all know how I don't love the thought of that, oh hunky chef man.... Anyhoo, Merry Christmas everyone, and I'll see most of you soon!

-Lindsay

Undokai and The Furano Wine Festival

Well this past month I've experienced a new thing at my kindergarten called the undokai (sports day) festival. The children have been preparing for months, practicing their floor gymnastics routines, dances, and parachute balloon play. In a nutshell all of the families come for 4 hours to watch the children perform and participate in family games like running relays. My job for the day involved me holding the goal tape for the relays, and believe me I held the crap out of that goal tape, aka my job was pretty insignificant. But still overall it was an entertaining day, apart from the 6am start time. The next major kindergarten deal is the Christmas Happyokai Performancei and as the English teacher I have a lot more responsibility compared to last year. This year I'm still preparing one English song for each of the three age groups to sing, but on top of this Hikari will put on the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs play in English with the 5/6 year olds. This is the first year the kindergarten has ever done this, so I'm a tad nervous. I get to play the evil witch though and laugh maniacally throughout it which really should add to my Japanese Christmas experience.

This month I also had the good fortune to go to the Furano Wine Festival located in central Hokkaido with my friend Jen. This is where all of the lavender fields are located, but unfortunately the fields were all finished their growing season by this time of year. Well I kind of pictured it to be a little different than it turned out to be. First I expected it to be more of a tasting experience where you walk around to various booths and just get a sip or two of each wine. In reality there were tasting booths but the portion size turned out to be a lot more than I had first anticipated, which is evident by the ginormous wine glass I'm holding in my hand. Thus by the end I didn't end up tasting all of the wine options because it was like noon on a Sunday and I had to find my way back to Tomakomai in one piece. Yes, I'm old. But the entertainment was great. First they had these silly Japanese people dressed up in their idea of traditional Italian gard for the stepping on the grapes ceremony. Really they looked like bad stereotrypes of maybe Germans???? I'm not quite sure, but they had fun dancing around the grape vat and then finally stepping on them. Next came the Japanese drumming and this was amazing. They first had some little ones do some drumming and they were super cute and then the adults came out and they were awesome. I guess it's like a popular class children take here like say dance or baseball. Lastly was this comedic dancing that came out right when everyone was a little tipsy. All of the masked people wearing the ukatas danced around the circle and after two steps did a little thrust which shook their pear shaped object? Yeah, check out the video I couldn't stop laughing. I tried asking some teachers at work what the significance of it is and I still have no idea, but oh well another entertaining Japanese experience. Oh and I apologise that it's not rotated correctly, blogger isn't that high tech.

In other news I'm offically coming home at the end of January. Yippee!! It's been over 2 years and at this point I feel like I'm ready to come home. Start my career (whatever that may be) get married and pop out those 7 kids I've always wanted....okay maybe not all of that but something like that.

-Lindsay

Big Adventures in Little Tokyo

Ok, first off I've been very bad and I haven't updated for like 2 months. Yeah, sorry I'm just lazy sometimes. But I do have fun stories to tell from this trip.

So the goal of this trip was to do as much cheap shopping as I could while checking out the sights of one of the craziest cities in the world. I had some reservations going into Tokyo. I really thought that it would be crawling with busy salary men, and with my closterphobia I thought that maybe it would turn out to be a little overwhelming. At times this was kind of true, but overall it's just a really fast paced, exciting city. There are so many things to do here, which is kind of a problem because it's hard to choose what to do in what area. Then once you get to your destination there are so many complexes with hundreds of stores right next to each other that you can spend the entire day in one complex and totally miss out on the other stuff. So my initial plan was to be totally anal and plan out my trip to the last detail. Of course this didn't happen as I got side tracked by other sights, and once you're in the travelling groove it's better just to go with the flow to a certain extent. And so onto the adventures...

The first two days of my trip were spent in the north east side of Tokyo called the Asakusa/Ueno district. This is a really pretty area. Not totally bonkers with people. It's where the older people live, so a safer area. My first hostel was a little hard to find and so I had to ask for directions like 5 times after I got off the subway. Initially I thought that Tokyo would have a lot of English, but I was mistaken. So when I asked various people I spoke only Japanese. At this point I've lived here for a year (isn't that crazy!) so speaking Japanese wasn't a problem, just a little surprising. Anyhoo, after I got settled I headed out to check out the Senso-ji shrine where there is an sacred insence urn. You're supposed to fan it onto yourself, and this promotes health. This area is also one of the best pleaces in Japan to buy traditional Japanese souvenirs: kimonos, ukatas (summer kimonos), paper lamps, fans, and tasty Japanese treats.The next day I headed to Ueno koen (park) and I checked out the Tokyo National Musuem. Here I saw real samurai swords with full body armour, beautful kimonos worn by the old imperial family, lacquerware boxes and trays (lacquerware is the black wooden objects that have been varnished like 10-12 times to get them jet black and then gold or red detailing is hand painted on them, in a nutshell they're gorgeous and super SUPER expensive to buy).

After the museum I was off to the south east end of Tokyo called Odaiba Bay right on the ocean. This is where serious shoppers come. So first I puttered around, saw the Statue of Liberty (oh Tokyo) and then headed to Palette Town which is a womens only giant shopping mall. It was awesome, the inside looked like a Las Vegas Roman themed hotel. So there were giant waterfalls everywhere, and the inside was painted with European murials. Very nice but also dangerous, my wallet felt a tad lighter after that day.

After this I headed to the Beverly Hills of Tokyo. I dressed up a bit and pretended that I belonged there, but who am I kidding. Someday though. Anyways, here I bought an amazing pair of shoes and I checked out the Tokyo International Forum. It's the picture on the right. Pretty much it's a huge art gallery with a ship outline as the ceiling. Interesting Tokyo architecture.

The next day it was time to change hostels, so I headed to the north western side of Tokyo to the Ikebukuro disrict. Ikebukuro itself is nice, but not a super interesting area, so instead of looking around here I headed to the crazy area of Tokyo; Shinjuku, Shibuya and Harajuku. This area is where all the young and trendy Tokyoites go to eat and shop. This is also the area where there are so many people it's overwhelming. But small price to pay for amazing shopping, and fun people watching. This is what Gwen Stefani is always singing about. Yes I know this is over the heads of the older folks (she's a pop singer) Anyhoo, this is also where my beloved Lulu Lemon store is located. Or should I say WAS located (sob). As you all know I have been planning on going to this store for like 2 fricking years. I thought about it when I was living in Taiwan, and all this year in Japan. I even saved a little pile of money marked "Lulu". I know you're all thinking I'm nuts, and maybe I am but I love lulu. So I'm in Shibuya, checking out my little map, getting lost left and right. Then after like an hour or two circling around the same area I spot it!!! I was so overjoyed I took this picture. Then I walked over to it and discovered that the store had offically closed down two days prior to this. ARG. Yeah I was a little heartbroken. Two fricking days man. So I retreated to the closest Starbucks and drank my sorrows away with a nice refeshing Frapp.

Playing Outside

Well this past month is all about getting outside for my two kindergartens and getting your hands a little dirty with nature. The first couple of pictures are from the children from Hikari kindergarten. That's the kindergarten that my little house is at. It's not a huge acridge like Kuni. Instead it holds the kindergarten, Chuo Highschool, and my little apartment complex. So in order to be one with nature we headed to our garden about a 20 minute bus ride away from the school to plant potatoes. Getting the children's hands dirty planting some kind of vegetable is part of the kindergarten philosophy here in Japan.

This is the complete opposite of my experience in Taiwan, where the only time the children played outside was for photo opts where it looked like they were allowed to play outside but really they were just placed there. Japanese may be maticulous about being clean but that doesn't mean they don't like to be outside and play.

I especially like the first picture of Miki Sensei leading her Red Tulip class to the garden, it reminds me of a mother duck and her little ducklings.

The second set of pictures are from Hikari no Kuni Kindergarten. This kindergarten is huge. I don't know how many acres, I want to say 3 or 4? Anyhoo, it's big. This day we headed to the big pond to have a picnic. I went with the Bambi class, and I had the fun job of trying to get little Hugo to step in with the other children and stay on the hike for our nature walk. But halfway through he decided he had had enough of walking and decided to play dead. Always fun...it was like dragging a drunk baby around. Last year I taught him a song about a banana. And that seems to be the only English word he likes to say now, so we had a 20 minute conversation about a banana. Peel banana, eat banana, slice banana etc. He's a cutie.

Once we got to to the pond it was time for lunch. It's fun for me to go on picnics with the children because this is when I get to see the wonderous creations of their bento lunches their mothers make for them. They really are a work of art. The children all have matching lunch accessories, say Pokemon, Doraemon, Pooh San (Winnie the Pooh). First they get out their container that holds a wet washcloth for them to wash their hands and face on. Next they use their little plastic blanket to sit on. They have matching chopsticks that they all eat with, this is including my 2 and 3 year olds. They use training chopsticks with little hoops that they put their fingers in to help them hold them. I could have used them say 5 or 6 years ago. Then they get to their lunches. The mothers make little nori (seaweed) pictures on their rice, say of a rabbit or an airplane. They they have little cup cake like wrappers that holds their meat and vegetable creations . And the portions are really small, so these mothers make tempura or what have you for like a two bite deal. I would be a terrible Japanese mother if I ended up marrying a Japanese man and having children. There's no way I would cook like that at say 6am for two bites. The funny thing is the children were interested in my ham and cheese sandwich that I slapped together in like 2 minutes. If only they knew how good they have it.

Golden Week

Well this is a difficult post to write, because I'm doing it without the help of my trusty mouse, as my computer has decided to semi crap out on me again. The tab button is currently my friend. Anyhoo, this past week I had three extra days off because it has been golden week here in Japan. What that means is that there are three holidays right next to eachother, giving everyone a longer weekend.
The first night my school had a party for the new teachers at Hikari no Kuni to welcome them offically to the company. So we partied it up Japanese style with some good old shabu shabu and karaoke. Shabu Shabu is a way of cooking your food where there is a hot pot of dashi (a fish stock) in the centre of the table and you put your meat in it to cook for only a couple of seconds. In a nut shell, it's fast and tasty. I'll be having some fun shabu shabu parties when I get back to Canada.

The picture on the right is of Asuka Sensei and Taruki Sensei getting there crab on. Asian countries are all about the fresh seafood, like these giant crab legs. After eating we played some party games where you see some hirugana written in the wrong order and you have to piece together the word quickly to win. Obviously I was of no help to my team, other than say moral support. Gumbalay, gumbalay (means go, go, go in Japanese).

After that we went to another place to sing karaoke. Japanese people are so funny when it comes to singing. They don't want to be the first ones to do it, so everyone is super shy at the beginning, but once someone steps up to the plate you can't stop them. Unfortunalty it was I who they made sing first. Seriously, they know how awful my voice is as they hear me singing kindy songs all day, so I don't know why they would put themselves through it further. I had no choice on the song either...so I ended up singing Avril Lavinge's boyfriend song. One thing I learned from that experience is that this is a very difficult song to sing if you don't know the fast rap part. So I somewhat sang the chorus and mumbled the rest: "Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like your boyfriend, no way blah blah blah you need a new one", something like that. When I finished Encho Sensei told me she could have done that, thanks.

The next couple of days I spent slugging around, going shopping with friends at the outlet mall we have here. It's just like the one in Bellingham. Which is the reason I haven't let myself go to it yet, it's a dangerous place for me. But I had a goal, find new pants. This turned out to be harder than I expected. In Taiwan it was possible, I just had to shell out the extra dough on nicer jeans. But here all of the waist sizes are from 23 to 28, yeah I'm a 28 still.... Thus I had to route around the reject bins at the outlet store to

find my size. After hours of looking I finally found a nice pair of levis for a very cheap price.

The next day I decided to go on a mini adventure to Otaru. Otaru and Hakodate are the two other semi big tourist cities here in Hokkaido after Sapporo. Hakodate was my first choice but right now is cherry blossom season here in Japan and they're in full bloom there at the moment. So very, very crowded. The tradition here is to get together with your family and drink sake under the blossoms. So my next choice was Otaru. The blossoms there are just starting to come out, so still nice and pretty, but not a gong show.

The picture above is of a rickshaw. This is the tourists choice of transportation here in Japan. A little pricey, but traditional and cute. You only find these in the major cities like Kyoto, Tokyo, etc. The local people would never use them to get around.

The draw of Otaru is that it has a long canal right next to the ocean. It's called the 'Venice of Japan' in my lonley planet. I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison, but it is a pretty stroll. So I did the tourist thing, had some sakura (cherry blossom) flavored tea for lunch with sakura flavored cakes. It was fun. I also got my hair cut. My plan was to
continue growing it out, but it's still super damaged from last years Taiwan fiansco with the purple and red hair dye. If you've forgotten the story, go back and read it again. It's entertaining. I've caved into Japanese style and gotten bangs again. I know, I know. But I'm actually enjoying them so far. We'll see how long I can rock the look for.

But wish me luck this week. We'll see if I can figure this mouse deal out myself.

Thailand

Well, my trip to Thailand was fantastic. I'm kind of wishing that I had enough money to make it a yearly excursion, (someday) but back to reality....

Unlike Emma and Meghan (my friends from Taiwan) I didn't have a direct flight to Bangkok, so my first stop was Korea. From my 4 hour stay in the airport it seems as if South Korea is very Japanese friendly. Everyone was speaking Japanese, so when I ordered my lunch I ordered in Japanese because I have no Korean whatsoever. It was a bit strange. The duty free shopping was amazing there though, Japanese and South Koreans sure know how to spend their cashola.

My first 2 and a half days were spent in Bangkok. There are so many things to do in Bangkok and we only had a short amout of time so priorities had to come into the picture. First off, experience a Thai cultural adventure. So we headed to Wo Phat, which is a big complex that houses really cool Thai architecture, and temples. There we started the great tradition of doing stupid poses infront of things (as you can see with the looking into the distance one). Next we went to see the giant lounging Buddha. Very cool. We were able to donate money and get some coins to put into a row of small bowls. This was to ensure good karma for the rest of our trip. But Meghan accidentally dropped her coins and as a result the three of us made a bit of a scene frantically trying to pick them up while the other people had their nice and serene spiritual experience. Whoops. Next we went to the grand palace to see the jade Buddha, which is the luckiest Buddha in Thailand. Unforunately we happened to be there on one of the 4 days of the year that it's closed for viewing because they must change the Buddha's clothing according to the seasons. But we did get to see some Thai guards marching in which was pretty cool, as well it was time for our second priority, shopping! The street we were staying on called Khau San is the tourist hotspot of Bangkok so all of the clothing is made for our size. For you living in Canada you can't fully appreciate this fact as you're constantlty surrounded by clothing that fits you, but for those of us living in Asia this is a constant annoyance. Also we found bootleg CDs and DVDs for like a $1.50 each, so we all stocked up. The quality is pretty much the same as the original. Same case, picture albums etc. Handy for the girl who has no T.V. After that we continued our shopping to a giant outdoor market. It was huge, probably 6 full blocks of shopping goodness. We took the subway back, which really impressed me. It's super modern and clean, it puts us Vancouverites to shame.

The next day were off to the Krabi region, located in the far south in between the Thai/Malaysian border and Phuket. We could have taken a bus, but that would have taken 12 hours, no thank you. So we flew, again I was impressed with Thai transportation. So one hour later we were in Krabi. Next we took a van bus to Koh Lanta (the island we stayed at). This trip should have taken no less than 3 hours, but that day we were on Thai time, so it took 6. Anyhoo, we made it there safe and sound, and we discovered that Emma had really done her research and found us an amazing beach. Instead of spending much needed shopping money on an expensive hotel, we opted to stay in a rustic beach Bungalow. It had two queen beds, roof fans, mosquito nets to keep out the creepy crawlies, and an outside bathroom with a flushing toilet. It was actually very comfortable, and really worked with the whole beach vibe. So for the next 4 days we sat on the beach, sipped cocktails and became really bright red. We also rented scooters and drove around the island trying to find more shopping. I kind of forgot how much fun scooters are. Who knows I might start a scooter gang when I get back to Vancouver.

Meghan and I also really wanted to ride an elephant. Emma decided not to come as she's been to Thailand before and done all the sterotypical touristy things. But where else can you ride an elephant? We named our elephant guide 'Mowgli' after the little boy from the jungle book, and he kept on saying "oye" to the elephant to tell him to turn or stop or what have you. I swear 'oye' is one of the most universally used words in every language. It seems as if the elephants were treated well, but who knows. I tried to see if I could see happiness in it's eyes, but it was hard to tell. I don't know how happy I would be if someone was yelling "oye" to me all day.

The Thai people we met throughout our trip though were all really great. They seem to really enjoy life, and find happiness in living a simple lifestyle. Their level of English too is amazing. No one really goes to English cram schools, but from listening to the tourists speak they pick it up really fast. And they are so confident when they speak, compared to the students I've had here in Japan and Taiwan. Every day a different group of kids would come and play with us in the water and try out their English. And when they had had enough they would just go back to speaking Thai.

So all in all Thailand was fantastic. I'm going back again at some point in my life again for sure.

-Lindsay