hi, i'm jenn

he sings to the beat of his own drum

on wednesday we had a “welcome party” — a little late, but meh. well, it was also because we worked all of last weekend and this was our compensation since we don’t get paid. so it was the 5 interns, guy, kendall and then coach Yamasaki. anyway, the night started off at a Yaki Niku place, where we ate kobe beef until we couldn’t. The meat was totally marbled. It was amazing. I even tried a piece raw.

     


Afterwards, we headed over to Tin Pan Alley for Nomihodai (all you can drink). Needless to say, there was much fun and dancing. The best was definitely their performace of “like a virgin” – which sounded more like “like a bersion”.

      


Then, after a quick print club stop, we realized we had lost Kendall. First we checked for him at Albert’s and then we were off to Sunny Side. On the way there we bumped into him, and inside we met up with Guy and coach (they had left Tin Pan Alley earlier than us). In the bar we had a jam session which was awesome. Videos in the next post.


  

After that, everyone headed for food to Osaka-Tei. I wasn’t hungry and headed back to the office with Chad and Amanda. Anyway, it was a great night. Though the lesson we all learned is that Nomihodai and Yaki Niku are probably better left to seperate nights.

On Monday I moved in with my new host family. I’m living with a couple who has 2 grown up sons. They’ve always wanted a daughter. And I’m it.

 

Anyway, they are really nice. Akira (my dad) picked me up in a Canada shirt with a flag and Montreal across the bottom. Turns out the year he retired they spent three weeks touring in Canada. I love how they’ve seen more of the country than I have. So it’s been fun so far. I mean, totally different than life with Nachan, but if I want to go out I can sleep at the office. Now I have my own room, and more food than I know what to do with. At least the walk from the station is good exercise…
right, so I’m not living in Nagasaki proper anymore – I live in a suburb called Nagoya Nagayo. It takes 40 minutes to get here. Most of it is walking (there’s a 10 minute train ride). I walk by this crazy slide every day — we’re supposed to go on it tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it is.


   

A few people have asked about my olympic involvement over in Japan.
Frankly, it’s been pretty minimal. I spend my time trash talking the Americans about their Hockey Teams. While the Women did me proud, I’ve been getting it about the mens’ 2 shut outs. Hrmph.
Actually, Saturday we did turn on the olympics. But we were quickly distracted by a show that was far more exciting — you know the crane games they have in arcades? With the stuffed animals that are virtually impossible to grab? It was a game show dedicated to that. We just couldn’t stop watching.

last night nachan and i met up for dinner with her friend ogatasan. he took us for dinner to a sushi restaurant. a real sushi restaraunt — the kind i don’t go to because they’re too expensive. needless to say, it was pretty cool.

the restaraunt was the width of a hallway with just a wooden bar. the bar had seating for 9 and that was all. when you sat on your stool, you were close enough to the wall to lean back against it without any danger of falling backwards. the wooden bar had 2 levels – one where a table would sit normally, and the second was above that.

we started the meal with a plate of sashimi. all sorts of cool stuff. the shrimp were huge and scary looking, . all the prep was done right in front of us, by the one chef, which was lots of fun to watch.

after the sashimi was done, he placed a pile of ginger on the upper level of the bar. we each had our own “stash”. then, he rolled various kinds of sushi. we got one of each kind. except for the maki – we got 2-3 of each of those. there was uni and ikura and even one with beef. so cool! some of them had mayo in them, so i guess it’s not a north american thing.

the sushi was always placed on top of the bar, next to the ginger. so cool i tell you. our last roll was a kappa roll. they were impressed i knew what that was. they were not impressed when i told them the only sushi i had eaten in japan so far was from the 100 yen kaiten sushi place. oh well, you win some, you lose some.

  
  

i thought about not posting until i actually got some mail. while my mailbox is still empty (sigh) i got plenty of emails — some concerned, though most were just annoyed at not having anything to read — so i’m back. more soon…

but i’m smiling. i got mail! an awesome super secret letter from my cousin marlee. And sudoku’s from dad. mail is happy. wink wink, nudge nudge

it’s a penguin parade! i’m in it! doesn’t japan rock?

(more to follow – sorry, my attention span is shot from the unzen post)

saturday jess and her host mom keiko picked me up at the nice early hour of 9 AM to journey to Unzen. we drove there via Obama, where I went last sunday to the onsen. only this time, keiko decided to take roads that were dangerous but gave us fantastic views. it was pretty fun (read – scary) to be in a tunnel meant for a train with a car coming toward you without its lights on and have to back out the whole way. i especially enjoyed when jess’s host mom would take both hands off the wheel and squeal and clap with glee!

  

when we made it to obama, we stopped at a really cute cake shop. we each chose a little snack which we enjoyed and then continued on our merry way.

 

we arrived at unzen around noon. first we headed to a pond that is pretty and had snow and ice near it. then to the hells which reminded me of the hells i saw in Beppu with lori. it was cool and smelled like sulfur.

   

after stopping to watch some glass blowers, we made our way to shimabara. first stop was lunch where jess had the kids meal and i ate mochi in a soup. then to the castle which was mostly under construction, limiting what we could see/do there. that’s okay, it was still cool to see the scaffolding.

 

we also saw a cool street in shimabara where there’s a ditch running down the middle with spring water flowing through it. we saw people filling up water bottles and buckets with the water to bring into their homes. there was even a street that had carp swimming through the ditch. though, come to think of it, i didn’t see people filling bottles on that street.

 

we then made an attempt at driving up fugen, the volcano that erupted in the 90ies. there was a sign at the bottom of the mountain suggesting tire chains, and as we reached our first ice patch jess and i, fearing for our lives, strongly encouraged keiko to turn back. i’m not saying she’s a bad driver, just that she’s not a driver with much ice experience. and the way she enjoyed accelerating into curves and ice patches was a little disconcerting. she seemed disappointed, but we were pretty insistent.

 
so back to unzen we went. first to an onsen. it was really great, though i didn’t realize what sulfur does to silver until it was too late. i now have a black tiffany’s bracelet. hrmph. after we ate these weird sweets that came in a self heating container (you pulled a string).
 
our last stop was to one of the hells we had been at earlier. they had a festival going on where unzen is all lit up. last night, there were free standing candles along the road. it was beautiful. one of the hells had a “lit up fairy tale” we went to see. too bad it was just japanese and the lit up scene didn’t change, cause we had no idea what it was about.
 
finally, after 13 hours of touring, we made it home.

i was msning last night with a few people and pointed out that “it was shaking”
since it lasted long enough to realize it wasn’t just me (and I hadn’t been drinking) i supposed it was an earthquake.
i was right!! From the random news source since no one seems to care but me:

TOKYO – An earthquake measuring a preliminary magnitude of 5.1 rocked Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu shortly after midnight Friday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage and there is no danger of a tsunami from the 12:12 a.m. quake.