hi, i'm jenn

chad and i frequent the 100 yen kaiten sushi place that i’ve mentioned (and photographed) before. thursday we went for lunch, and where we sat offered a different perspective on the sushi making process there:

he’s making gunkan-maki here, but the same machine is used for nigiri sushi.

That’s japanese for Slip Ups.

In Japan you are frequently taking your shoes on and off.

In restaurants, it’s not uncommon to sit and eat on a raised platform covered in tatami mats. You eat in socks.

When I go into schools they make us put on slippers(the kids themselves have indoor shoes).

In japanese homes and apartments. there’s normally a little enclave (genkan) from which you actually step UP into the house. You leave your shoes there.

Anyway, my host family here makes me wear slippers (Surripa in Japanese) in the house. They’re too big for me, and I have tripped on them numerous times. The stairs to my room are pretty steep and they’re wooden and slippery. So maybe it’s cause they don’t like me? Going up the stairs I caught a slipper on a stair and ripped the sole away from the bottom. Whoops. I intentionally forget to put them on, but my host father normally notices and asks where they are. I don’t like slippers.

Better yet, last week I came out of the hina doll museum and went to get my shoes (Black low-top converse) from the cubby hole. I took the pair that was there, and said “Are these mine?” – they looked big and clean. Heh. But there were no others around. Anyway, after I had put my foot into the first shoe I got tapped on the back with a “Gomenasai” and there was a woman laughing, apologizing and holding my itty bitty dirty shoes. Next time I go to a museum I’m wearing Uggs. I haven’t seen anyone else in Japan with those.

Then there are toilet slippers too, but that’s another story for another time…

i’m putting this here in writing so you can all hold me to it: I will buy a new digital camera by next tuesday.

yes, last week i dropped mine, and now there’s a piece of tape holding the memory card’s cover closed. if that’s not a sign that it’s time, i don’t know what is.

I’m having a problem making my final decision on which one to buy. I was decided on the Canon SD30 in bright purple, but then I started reading some reviews that made the indoor pictures sound really bad.

anyway, here’s what i’m looking for:

• ultra compact
• can take a decent indoor picture without a flash (i hate having devil eyes)
• performs passably in low light, with and without a flash
• i don’t really need more than 4 or 5 MPs. frankly, i don’t need more than the 2 i have right now, but the ability to crop photos and still get decent prints from them will be nice.

I’ve been considering everything from the Panasonic Lumix, to the Casio Exlim, to the waterproof Pentax. I go to the electronics store and freeze in panic.

I’m leaning towards a canon SD450 (or something that’s a direct upgrade to my s200). any comments? suggestions? i’m going crazy here. i’m having a hard time stomaching switching from a canon (I mean, i even had the s100!!) but some of the other cameras are really pretty…

actually, ume is pronounced ooo-meh – but i still like the title.

anyway, this weekend we went to Ayako’s home town of Saga to celebrate the plum festival called “ume matsuri”. this festival takes place at the nearby shrine that is up.
we arrived in saga around 3 on saturday, and had missed that day’s festivities. instead we headed into the city to see the “hina matsuri” festivities. more hina dolls! fat ones! skinny ones! ice ones!

we also played a fan game where you had to flick the fan foward with your thumb, and try to knock something over. it took awhile, but i got it.

    

that night we chilled at ayako’s house with her family. ate oden for dinner, and watched TV. we watched some very interesting TV (i’ll talk about it in another post) and crashed fairly early.

 

Sunday we were up and out of Ayako’s house before ten to head to the local shrine. A 5 minute walk away was an amazingly long and steep set of stone steps. up we went…

    

at the top they served us koi-koku (miso soup with koi in it). none of us liked it very much, so we tossed it over the side. ayako and mayumi finished theirs.

 

jess and i donned the green “staff” robes and started to help ayako’s mom serve the hot plum juice. it was fun.



now, normally there aren’t many foreigners, but at this festival chad, eric, jess and i were the *only* ones there. it was hilarious. people were talking to us left right and centre. the bands, and MCs talked to us. a jazz singer stopped, and asked me: “when i sing in english, do you understand the words?” i told her she was “josu” (= very good). another band said they will try to speak english to us. i yelled “GAMBARE!” They liked that. Chad was photographed almost as much as if he was a plum tree.

    

The day was jam packed with performances by Taiko drummers, a jazz band, a few random rock bands, Kendo, and of course, karaoke. We thought about singing, but apparently you had to pre-register and bring your own tape. So that was it for that idea.

   

The day ended with Bingo. There was also bingo earlier in the day, and I had won — but there were a bunch of winners at the same time, and only one prize left. We had to janken for it and I won. Oh, and Eric had a false bingo so that was pretty funny. But in the afternoon game, of the 7 of us, 6 won. Poor Chad was the only loser. In all fairness, someone gave me a winning card to call bingo on. Ayako was the first winner. She had mentioned earlier that she wanted strawberries, and got herself a big crate of them. I chose a plum bonsai tree. I was so excited. Eriko got one too. The others got a various assortment of ume-boshi, ume-jelly and other plum goodies. What a fun way to end the day!

    

So, after the festival wrapped up, we piled into the back of ayako’s mom’s truck with our goodies and had a fun ride back down the steep twisty turny roads.

  

The blossoms were beautiful. As you can imagine, we all got a little bit trigger happy. Here are a few pictures for now, and once I get them all together, I’ll add a link to my ume album. Click on the image to see a larger copy.

  
  

Okay, so look what you eat on Girls’ Day – Hina Sushi! I was dying. I didn’t want to eat them and left them for last.
We also ate Chawanmuchi but that wasn’t as exciting looking so I didn’t take pics.

    

tuesday night chad and I travelled to Isahaya to see Deerhoof play. It was quite the adventure.
I had read about the concert a week before on pitchfork and emailed the contact for the show. He told me that the show was sold out, but ended up getting us two tickets. Here are some highlights from the correspondence between me and the promoter:

it’s very very narrow.
http://members2.jcom.home.ne.jp/zhihui/kenilbon-pics2.html
…
The person who likes music like deerhoof is ..learning.. very glad of being a lot of Nagasaki of me.

He actually told us it was narrow multiple times. It was. It was the party room of a Karaoke box that took us about an hour to find in the rain. And it was also a LOT of fun. As we approached the door, the guy said “Jenn?”, and I was like “YAY!”. There were even balloons on the ceiling! AND after the concert the promoter’s friend drove us to the station in an unmarked white van that was pimped out with hello kitty gear on the inside.
Chad wrote up the experience on his blog, and I’m lazy so look there.

   


update: i wrote my friend an emial saying thanks and that we had a great time. here’s what he wrote back:

Hi jenn.

Hall narrowness ?
Everyone may enjoy it.
Moreover, when it is done that it is interesting, it reports.
It is good also in the boyfriend.

daisuke

hurray for translators

Today is Girls’ day (click for more information). For girls’ day, people with daughters get hina dolls and put them on display. Even my tamagotchi has them on display.

Hina Dolls are beautiful and expensive. And you don’t play with them. They’re just decorative. On Saturday we went to JUSCO to look at them. Some were more than $1000.

Seems like a normal day. Kids have school. Parents have work. Meanwhile May 5, Boys’ Day, is no school. No fair. But they don’t get dolls – only carp flags. I think I’d rather the day off of school.

    

before this weekend starts, let’s talk about last weekend. last weekend my host brother came in to visit from Tokyo. he’s 29 and married with a baby on the way. we hung out for a big in the afternoon, and then again in the evening after he came back from drinking with his friends. he was really excited about my pb.

in the afternoon, akira took me to the park around the corner and we went down the slide. 4 times. i also watched kids sled down a grass hill. i couldn’t stop laughing and explained to akira that we do this in canada on snow. he thought that idea was funny. there were other playgrounds too, one that even had a kiddy climbing wall. oh how safe!

    


sunday we went to glover gardens, an area where foreigners used to live. or maybe they moved all their homes there to make a kind of museum. it was on the top of a hill with pretty views. they had escalators and moving sidewalks to get you up there. anyway, it was pretty. then we went to the Confucius Shrine and Museum of Chinese History. but it was closed. i took pictures anyway.

    

i like to do sudokus. i was excited to come to japan, home of the sudoku, and do authentic japanese puzzles with authentic japanese people. but no one here knows what they are. they mistook my love of sudokos as a general love of puzzles and gave me wooden blocks to arrange into shapes. yipee. in return i showed them a puzzle called IQ blocks (thanks jeff!).
anyway, i taught my host mom and dad how to do them. now we do them together. and i’m still determined to find sudokus in japan.

keiko can sing! with the music no less!