How to Make Friends in Japan

We found some Japanese friends! I didn't think it would be possible, with my pathetic lack of Japanese language ability. Here's how the magic happened:

I asked my supervisor if there was a group with which my husband could play basketball. Not only did she introduce him to a group of young males to play with weekly, she asked  him to assist with coaching the team at the junior high school! Here's a photo of him in action:

The style of these pick-up games is often a frantic race from one hoop to the next, with the taller guys getting rebounds and chucking full-court passes to the sprinting guards. Like every possession. It puts "run-and-gun" in a whole new light. There is little to no physical contact, selfishness, aggression, fouls, or anger. Everyone is out there having a good time, and being competitive but being friendly first and foremost. Quite a bit different from pick-up games in the US - well - about exactly the opposite. 

It seems that there are three steps to making friends in Japan (or maybe anywhere):  1. Do something you like. 2. Find other people who like it too. 3. Talk to them. I think it might just be that simple.

After his first basketball outing, we were invited to meet two guys and their lady friends (relationship statuses unknown) at a local restaurant owned by someone's mother. It was closed the Sunday we went, a stormy night perfect for some handmade takoyaki (octopus balls) and friends. We spent 3 hours together, cooking, chatting, laughing, and looking up words on our Smartphones (they make for excellent electronic dictionaries). 

We were even graced with a magic show by the mom who owns the restaurant!

They showed us so much kindness, and often I am at a loss as to how to show people how much I appreciate everything they do to make us feel welcome. Next, we will 'drink alcohol together' - the plan proposed by the young men. Tom hopes to have them over to watch NBA International League Pass sometime too.

A Meeting in Obihiro

Last weekend I took a trip to Obihiro for the HAJET fall meeting. Obihiro is a city of about 150,000 people, located in the Tokachi area of Hokkaido. It is a large farming area, the main crops are wheat, potatoes, beets and beans. It is home to the "pristine" Satsunai river, which, like the Mississippi River, is largely polluted by fertilizer runoff from local agriculture.

I was nervous about the train ride, since my experience taking trains includes only a couple days in Chicago, chaperoned by a friend with a Smartphone, and going by myself from Yakumo to Sapporo with no transfer. That's it. There is like one train in Minnesota and I've never taken it. To Obihiro, I took a limited express train, transferred at Minami Chitose, and somehow figured out from which platform my train departed and which car was for unreserved seats. Being in Japan is in indispensable learning experience in so many ways. 

Upon arrival, I visited the Kita no Yatai foodstand, an alleyway of unique, compact restaurants. The area is famous for a dish of glazed pork on rice called butadon. We stayed at the New Hotel Obihiro, a fairly priced place that smelled like decades of cigarette smoke had seasoned the walls.

The training was rather minimal, but I enjoyed HAJET's ongoing game of assassins (I made the first kill by getting someone to say 'galaxy' only about 2 minutes after the game began), the Halloween costume contest (I dressed as Dr. Horrible, an obscure reference that helped me find kinship with some nerds), and the pub quiz, despite the way HAJET seems like a selective group of insiders who operate by the same popularity rules as high school, and the tendency for the 3rd+ year JETS to take every opportunity to interject with their undying expertise. That was a long sentence. 

I was glad to have some time to walk around during the day, and I found Obihiro's Park: Midori ga oka koen. Only a 15 minute walk from the train station, there is a park golf course, open green spaces, gardens, an art museum, a pond with mallards and some trails. It was a lovely fall day for a stroll.

I had some good times, met some friends, and took the train back to Yakumo feeling less than 100% after a night of ample festivities, if you catch my euphemism. 

Work Updates

I have been swamped, stressed, and sleepy. Between teaching 9-5 at 5 junior high schools, I facilitate an evening English circle, teach an English class just for beginners, and today I am leading a classroom/conversation one-shot English workshop for a mix of elementary and middle school teachers. Not to mention the everyday lesson planning, and I have to do and the multiple full-period Halloween lessons tomorrow and next week. And to top it off, my BOE is adding elementary schools to my mix, so Monday I will team teach at my first elementary school. It doesn't help my stress level that I have had about 5 CouchSurfing requests that I have had to organize in the last couple of weeks, and that lat weekend I was out of town for the HAJET Fall Meeting in Obihiro and wasn't able to get work done or relax. *head explodes*

On a lighter note, I drove to my 2 schools that are 45-minutes away through a mountain pass last week, and the fall colors and sunshine over the sea of Japan was so picturesque:

Last week all of my junior highs also came together to display tidbits of their school festival performances, which overall was lovely.

However, I think there is a teacher who is trying to sabotage me. She's an English teacher who sits next to me every day and rarely talks to me, besides apologizing for putting her stuff all over my desk all the time. On a day that I wasn't informed that it was a half day for students and there was no lunch planned, I remained at school for an hour while she ate next to me, before someone else mentioned the schedule change. She is constantly misinforming me about my weekly schedule, but what really got me pissed was what happened at the performances.

I walked into the gym, standing along the wall with a few other teachers while the gym filled with students sitting in chairs or rugs on the gym floor. A kind teacher came over to me and showed me where I could sit on the floor with students if I wanted to. But the saboteur intervened, and told me where I should sit in a line of tables with about 7 seats. She led me there and I didn't have much choice but to sit down.

Then, the superintendent and the head of the town council were seated at the other end of these tables. I felt out of place, sitting alone at the other end of the table that seemed reserved for people more important. I realized right before the performance started that the principals of each of the 5 junior high schools were standing next to each other, on the other side of the tables, as if they were waiting to sit down, and I thought for sure I was in their spot, but before I could act, people brought a bunch of folding chairs for them to sit where they didn't have quite as good of a view. So I sat, with 4 chairs between myself and the superintendent and head of the town council, for the entire performance. I felt like such a moron, but that teacher told me to sit there! She walked by later, and didn't acknowledge me at all.

I can only try to explain how uncomfortable I was...and have my little conspiracy theory that this teacher is out to make me look bad. Maybe she didn't know those tables were reserved, but why would she have been so insistent for me to sit there when she has never gone out of her way for me before?

At my two-month meeting with my supervisor, I was asked if there were any situations in my life in Japan where I felt confused or uncomfortable (the paper she gave me said, "tell me about your condition"). I told her that I feel confused and uncomfortable a lot, but I would do my best. Being unable to speak Japanese well, unable to understand the subtle rules of Japanese culture, and unable to grasp the individual school subcultures, renders me awkward and if unguided or misguided, I will likely commit many a faux pas, creating an endless string of baka gaijin's misadventures.  *sigh*

Shikotsu-Toya National Park, Ryokan, and Tourist Traps

This last weekend I took a trip to Noboribetsu's Hell Valley (地獄谷 Jigokudani) and Shikotsu-Toya National Park (支笏洞爺国立公園 Shikotsu Tōya Kokuritsu Kōen). Having a car in Hokkaido makes amazing weekend trips possible. 

The trip began in Noboribetsu, found on the Japanese Ministry of Environment`s list of the top 100 areas of fragrance and scenery! I stayed at Dai-Ichi Takimotokan, the largest spa in Asia. This was by far the most luxurious stay I have ever had at a hotel. 

I greatly enjoyed staying in a Japanese style room for the first time. The tatami mat floor is delicate and it smells very earthy, both refreshing and sort of like a pet store at the same time. While I had been hesitant to book a room without Western style beds, futons turned out to be a lovely experience! It felt like a sleep over, and the staff set them out for us in the evening. I honestly enjoyed them so much, I slept so soundly and comfortably, that I would consider sleeping on a futon back in America.

Hell Valley (地獄谷 Jigokudani) is a 450-meter-diameter mouth of a volcano, which produces 3,000 liters of hot water per minute. The fragrance I mentioned above? That would be the sulfur rotting egg fart smell that seemed initially vile, but ended up growing on me by the end of the trip. If you can't get over that smell, you won't enjoy the hot springs very much, as they contain sulfur too. The hot springs feed the baths at local ryokan, and as the springs boast 11 different types of water, each with different chemical properties that supposedly have different health benefits .

Every year around late August, the Hell Festival takes place here, so demons are a local motif. There are even red and blue beers, which looked cool but tasted like soapy carbonated water.

I enjoyed wearing my first yukata, using the instructions provided by the hotel website:

The main drag in Noboribetsu is full of souvenir shops, and some all-you-can-drink bars at night. One amazing thing about this town is that at any time, you can see the hotel guests walking about in their yukata and sandals!

Dinner was a huge, all-you-can-eat buffet with seriously high quality food, a large selection of fresh seafood, and a huge table of desserts including four kinds of hard-serve ice cream. Breakfast the next morning was also impressive, but I didn't have much room in my stomach after dinner the night before! It's probably best to choose either the dinner OR breakfast buffet.

The next day, I took a cable car/gondola up a rope way to reach the summit of Mt. Usu (有珠山 Usu-zan). This volcano had a massive eruption in 1977, wiping out all the surrounding buildings. People who reside near volcanoes (which accounts for many residents in Japan) have a unique appreciation for the destructive power of nature, and a unique resilience for overcoming that destruction. There was a volcano simulation room and museum, and plenty more tourist traps. My visit coincided with a group of tour buses from the Princess Cruise lines, and I hadn't seen so many white people in awhile!

Here's the crater at the top:

Below is a view of Showa-shinzan (昭和新山), a lava dome that mysteriously emerged from the ground between 1944-1945. A local postman kept notes about the rapid growth of this mountain, which remain the best record of its growth. The Japanese government tried to keep it's emergence secret at first, as it seemed an unlucky omen during wartime. It is listed as one of Japan's "Special Natural Monuments" - there seem to be about a million different lists like this in Japan, presenting every location as superlative.

My next ryokan stay was in Toyako resort town (Tōyako Onsen 洞爺湖温泉), which lies on the shore of Lake Toya (洞爺湖 Tōya-ko). Lake Toya is a caldera lake, formed when land around the volcano collapsed during an eruption. I took a cruise on a castle-themed ferry, and again, encountered many tourists. I saw one lady with skull pants that I had seen earlier that morning at the breakfast buffet. Also, a good bit of advice is that where tourist areas are concerned, sometimes it's better to speak English than Japanese to other tourists. I walked up behind an Asian couple that spoke only English to buy tickets for the ferry (while us white folk purchased tickets using only Japanese), and another Asian man asked us to take his picture and we spoke a bit of Japanese to him before we realized the text on his camera was in Korean. It can be confusing. Anyway, here are some photos from the cruise:

The ferry stopped at Nakano-shima, an island in the middle of the lake, that houses the Tōya Lake Forest Museum, a shrine, some tame deer, and a little ice cream stand. I think it is possible to explore the forested area that is fenced off, but the sign stated that during the deer mating season (Sep-Oct) they can be quite aggressive, so it seemed in our best interest to steer clear.

 I stayed at Kawanami Hotel, a small but affordable place, with excellent meals, and hot baths that aren't as crowded as other places. I enjoyed a relaxing 10pm bath without another soul in sight, and had all three baths to myself! I really recommend visiting the bath right before bed...I have never slept better in my life. And remarkably, every summer, Toyako shoots off fireworks every night about 8:40pm over the lake. If you're as lucky as I am, you can see them right from your window! 

The last leg of the trip was a stop at a sandwich and cheesecake place in Niseko that came recommended by one of my Japanese coworkers called Graubunden. The sandwiches, on soft and delicious French bread, are made with some hard to find ingredients from around the world! I had the ALT (avocado, lettuce, tomato, not assistant language teacher), with chicken, and it came with cheddar cheese and dill pickles, YUM! However, I recommend against the pumpkin pie, which tastes nothing like its American counterpart, and pales in comparison to their other choices: cheesecake, or gigantic slices of layer cake, the likes of which international bakeries have never seen.

If I could do this trip again, I would spent less time visiting tourist traps and more time hiking and exploring off-the-beaten-path locales. I truly enjoyed the ryokan experience and the natural sights!