Takanabe to the Limit

This weekend I had the pleasure of visiting Takanabe, a Kadogawa-sized town about forty minutes south of Hyuga for the Takanabe Lantern Festival. I was able to meet tons of students, eat a calzone, and appreciate the glory of lanterns. There were a lot of lanterns. 

The calzone was great too.

If you ever get the chance to see the wonder of the Takanabe Lantern Festival, be sure to arrive early, as you'll be given a lighter to go around the park and light things with (preferably candles and lanterns). It's a fun way to participate in the festivities and let your inner pyromaniac out.

Though we arrived in the evening when the sun was going down, it was amazing how different the place looked after dark...

The lanterns themselves were decorated and colored by Takanabe students. There were hundreds of them, each unique and adorable! If I was a shadier person, I'd take them home for my living room! 

Side note: I definitely did not steal any lanterns.

This one features Jibanyan, a ghost cat, from a show that my students are really really into called Youkai Watch. He says "nyan" after everything he says (much like real cats).

There were even unique lantern statues made by different schools in the area.  Personally, Godzilla was my favorite. 

My favorite part by far however, was the beautiful fire river leading up the mountain. An ALT friend of mine said that she and a few other folks lit the whole thing almost singlehandedly last year! I thought that must have been pretty hard on her back considering the vast number of these things. 

Afterwards, we walked down to the main festival area. Dances were happening, foods were being eaten, I found that delicious calzone. I also made new friends...

...like this dancing drummer who let me drum his drum (not in a weird way).

...and this lion who ate everyone's head. Apparently, if a lion eats your head, you will have a lot of good luck. But I didn't learn that until later.

I was actually really worried at first because, you know, there was a giant lion eating people's heads. It's just a little unnerving if you've never seen lions in the wild.

I'm happy to say that I too finally was eaten by the lion, and I'm still alive to tell the tale.

I've been feeling pretty lucky lately. I wonder if it's because of all this lucky lion business?

Typhoon Food: How Vongfong Went Wrong

Pre-typhoon waves at Isegahama

In honor of the latest “super typhoon” to hit Miyazaki, I’ve written a haiku that perfectly reflects my feelings about these annoying disasters.

Typhoon is coming!

I’m sort of afraid of it!

Oh wait, it’s not bad.

I’ve now been in Miyazaki a little over two months and we’ve already had three typhoons hit our fair prefecture, including the great beast known to people everywhere as “the great Vongfong.” Not to mention, they all happened to hit on three day weekends. Talk about bad luck!

I wasn’t so scared of Vongfong when I heard it was heading our way, since not a single one of my coworkers, students or teachers seemed to think anything of it. I told everyone at school to “take care, typhoon coming” when I left for work that Friday, but otherwise, it seemed like it was going to be a normal weekend. 

Then the calls started coming. My family was worried (Vongfong was on the news! The American news!), my friends were sending me messages, Huffington Post was reporting on it, even my hamster seemed a bit more energetic than usual. 

See how worried she is?

It didn’t help that, like a great stormy bull being goaded by the matador Miyazaki, the typhoon was heading straight for us. That is, according to all the weather maps.

In the span of two days, I went from not being worried about the typhoon at all, to being fairly convinced that Vongfong would be the next Katrina. 

So I decided to prepare for the worst. I abandoned my adorable ground floor apartment (I was certain it would flood) in favor of my friend Julia’s concrete, second floor fortress of an apartment in Hyuga. Hauling all my valuables, my art supplies, my tarot cards, and enough food and water and candles to last three days in the worst circumstances, I was prepared for anything. I even packed a tiny emergency bag for my hamster, just in case I had to evacuate quickly, and didn’t want to lug her whole cage to the evacuation center.

In the last typhoon, I drove to a café in Nobeoka where drank coffee, ate sweets, and relaxed while watching the rain whipping trees around outside. This time, I was hunkering down with military precision.

By Sunday evening, everything seemed set to go. The wind and rain were picking up, but the storm wasn’t supposed to properly hit until Monday. Julia and I decided it would be a great idea to grab some extra emergency food (i.e. delicious baked goods) from the nearby grocery store before we would be stranded in the apartment.

We went out into the rain, not knowing disaster would soon strike.

When we arrived at the grocery store, the rain was pounding the asphalt, and the wind was practically shaking us out of the car. I turned off the engine, counted to three, and we ran as fast as we could to the store entrance. 

A bit wet, but still alive, we wandered the supermarket aisles debating on whether it was best to buy mochi snacks, cake (or both) for our day of typhoon reckoning. 

After paying for our snacks, we walked back outside, bracing ourselves for the buffering that was sure to come.

That was when I noticed something important about my car amidst all the terrible rain and wind, something that turned what should have been a quick excursion into a typhoon shopping disaster from hell.

“Oh! I left my headlights on!” I casually observed aloud as we furiously scrambled through the rain.

“What? Is that a problem?” she yelled back.

“No! It was only a few minutes! It’s fine!”

Ten minutes later, I had realized that it was not fine, and my car’s battery was totally drained. It wouldn’t start and needed a jump.

Which, if I wasn’t in a typhoon, would be mildly annoying. When the wind speed is 44kph and rain is pouring on your head in buckets, it’s downright dangerous.

“WAZUMI SAN! MOSHI MOSHI LAUREN DESU! I’M AT SANO SUPERMARKET AND MY CAR HAS NO POWER AND THE TYPHOON IS HERE AND I’M GOING TO DIE!” I scream into my cell phone.

 I’ve called my amazing supervisor in hopes that he can somehow perform a miracle and keep me from being swept away in a super storm, but I know the chances are slim. I’m now certain death is imminent. 

“Oh! Your car? Okay, wait a moment!” he says, cheery as ever.

Twenty minutes later, Wazumi San and one of the department chiefs of the Kadogawa Town Hall (who is called Kacho) arrive, decked out in rain gear, ready to take action. They hand us two large umbrellas, which take all our strength to hold open, as they pop the hood of my car and connect the bright orange jumper cables to the engine. It's one of the strangest moments of my life so far.

You can see the sheer panic in my eyes.

I asked Wazumi San if he thought that jumping the car in this weather would be safe before beginning the operation. He just said, “There might be a big flash!” and chuckled good naturedly to himself. I found this insane, yet somehow quite comforting.

Kacho yells at me to try the engine, so I jump inside my car. I turn the key and nothing happens. “It’s not working!” I yell into the storm. Kacho, confused, pushes through the wind to the driver’s side, and checks everything out. He says something in Japanese and points to the gearshift. I realize I’ve left the car in gear, which is why it isn’t starting.

“OH MY GOD, I’M A HUGE IDIOT.” I exclaim to no one in particular. Of course, when I switch back to “P,” it starts. Good as new.

I apologize profusely and thank everyone involved, and Julia and I get back on the road. We’re soaked and cracking up over the absurdity of the situation, lamenting our bad, weird luck and looking forward to munching on the amazing snacks we bought on the craziest grocery trip ever. At least we were prepared for the insane typhoon that would supposedly wreck our town on Monday.

The next morning, when the typhoon was supposed to hit, we woke up to this:

I’m never listening to the weather reports again.

(Special thanks to Julia for her amazing photos!)

I Think I'm Learning Japanese (I Really Think So!)

The kanji for "flower" painted by one of my favorite students

When I was a child, my favorite people were the characters in my Roald Dahl books. When my friends were climbing trees and doing cartwheels in the grass, I had my nose stuck in a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I’ve always been the kind of person who has to stop into the bookstore, just for a second, to look at all the pretty paperbacks and daydream about the stories housed within. I’m the girl with the thick novel in her purse just in case there’s a free moment on the train or at the restaurant. I love to read. 

Then I moved to Japan, and suddenly I became illiterate.

There’s something very upsetting about living in a culture and not being able to read. The simplest of tasks suddenly become monumental challenges. I remember going to the grocery store on my second week here and staring at an aisle of seasonings and vinegars, trying to decipher which bottles could possibly contain soy sauce. Or going to the Miyazaki City train station and trying to figure out the cost of a train back to Kadogawa, when the timetable was written in kanji. It’s difficult to feel like an independent, autonomous person when you have to ask the lady at the 7-11 what kind of meat is inside the rice ball you’re holding.

I studied Japanese for about a month before coming to Japan. It was difficult. Without the classroom setting that I had become accustomed to in university, I wasn’t able to retain much. I listened to my Living Language CD in the car, learned basic greetings and vocabulary (like body parts, numbers and family members) and began to learn the hiragana syllabary. It wasn’t much, but I was proud of myself for trying. I assumed many Japanese people would speak some English anyway, since it’s a mandatory subject in Japan.

The reality of the situation was a bit different. Arriving in Tokyo and realizing that I didn’t even know how to order a bowl of noodles made me feel completely underprepared. I relied heavily on other JET participants’ knowledge of the language and culture to get around and figure things out, all while studying like a total maniac whenever I had the opportunity. If I couldn’t be a Japanese language expert on arrival, at least I would be the best student I could be.

For the first month of living here, I learned as much as possible. My world was a flurry of flashcards and “what is this in Japanese” questions to anyone and everyone I came across. I signed up to meet with a tutor twice a month with one of my ALT friends. Everything became a learning opportunity.

But the thing that made moving to Kadogawa unique in comparison to other language learning situations I had been in was the fact that I wanted to learn Japanese really, really badly. I wanted to be able to communicate with small children and people I met in town. I wanted to know what the super nice lady at the convenience store was asking me. I wanted to tell jokes!

The experience of being immersed in a community where I had to use the language on a daily basis gave me an intrinsic motivation to learn and become a better student. It was really fun to learn new vocabulary, because everything I learned I was able to use almost immediately. Learning a new language gave me tools to make friends, be autonomous, and express myself in a culture completely different from my home. 

Today marks my two month-iversary of being in Japan, and things are really different than when I first arrived here. Of course, I’m not fluent in Japanese, and I still have difficulty with many parts of the language. My grammar is a mess, I often forget words, and some days, my brain just kind of shuts off and I don’t really understand Japanese or even English all that well. 

But in spite of my shortcomings, I have basic conversations and chat with my coworkers and students in Japanese on a daily basis. When I go on a trip to a different part of Miyazaki and people ask me where I’m from, I understand them. It’s a huge accomplishment! Being bilingual has always been a dream of mine, and I am so proud that it almost kind of sort of maybe feels like it might come true (if I keep studying).

The coolest part of all is that I can even kind of sort of read Japanese now. I’m studying kanji everyday and I’ve mastered hiragana and katakana. I may still be illiterate now, but not for long. 

Soon I’ll have my nose back in those Harry Potter books. I’ll just be reading them in Japanese!