Things I love about Japan

There are Colonel statues outside of the KFCs here.

Towada Lake Festival

Towada is a town about 45 minutes away from where I live by car. Towada lake is an amazingly beautiful lake that's named after the town. The town and the lake are no where near each other. Towada lake is about an hour and 15 minutes away from where I live... in the other direction from where the town of Towada is. Welcome to Japan.

In any case, as I mentioned in the last post, Laura took me to a festival that happened to be at Towada lake about 2-3 weeks ago. It's an interesting festival in that it's actually a combination of three other really famous festivals in Aomori prefecture (prefectures are like states... so Aomori = Arizona in my new address :P ) It was a 'Previously on....' festival basically. It was still lots of fun though, and I enjoyed it a lot. Unfortunately most of my pictures didn't come out that well from it, but I still have a few worth showing. Most of them are of the shrine near Lake Towada though... but they are still cool! The problem was most of the festival was at night, and I didn't have my actual camera with me, just my cell phone. My cell phone apparently does not like taking pictures at night... But oh well. Let's begin! First of all, the picture at the top of the post is where you wash your hands and mouth before you go to the shrine to pray.


This is the actual shrine itself, complete with actual praying people!

A little side shrine off to the side of the main shrine.

Another little side shrine.

I wish I had pictures of the lake, but for some reason I was so impressed with how pretty it was that I totally spaced on taking pictures of it... I fail. It's alright though, I promise I'll take some in October, since it's apparently one of the best places in Aomori to go for fall and see the leaves change color.

These next two pictures are the only pictures that came out somewhat decently of the festival itself. This was actually the last part of the festival, and it was totally worth going just to see these guys. They take a pole with tons of lanterns attached to it, hike it up into the air, and then balance it on various parts of their body without letting it fall.

For example, this guy is balancing it on his hip. Why? Because he can.

They would do all these amazing things where they would run at the audience with them, and you would think that it was going to crash into you, but they were still balancing them fine. There were three of them, and at the finale they started running at each other and crashing into each other, and yet they still didn't let the lanterns fall. It was really amazing.


Sorry about the cruddy pictures this post, I promise next time I know I'm going somewhere cool, I'll take my actual camera with me. These aren't too bad for cell phone pictures though... oh well. :) I'll update again soon! I think I'm almost caught up! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...

Oirase Gorge

Almost caught up. I think. I'm getting closer anyways.... About 2-3 weeks ago Laura (another ALT here in Sannohe) took me to a festival in a nearby town, and we had to drive through Oirase gorge to get there. This did not bother me, as it's probably one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. Pictures don't really do it justice, it needs to be experienced. Apparently I was also about 2 months late to the party, it was much greener earlier in the year. Oh well, apparently it's also gorgeous once all the trees start turning colors in fall, so I'll just have to go again. ;) Enjoy the pictures, and sorry for the lack of commentary on this one. Hopefully the pictures say enough by themselves. :)

Engrish of the week

"Empty is run about freely.
Flying, will drink water, it will have a meal, or a swallow will be made anything in the air."

Seen on a bag from a book store.

Adventures in Sannohe

Whee, still trying to play catch up here. I have way too many pictures to go through still. Maybe I'll just have to be boring and do nothing for a while until the 'to be posted' picture folder shrinks a bit...

These are pictures I took my first week in Sannohe, when Yasuko (my supervisor) took me around to sight-see. It's a beautiful little town. :)


This is the entrance to one of the local graveyards. It's near one of the schools I work, and it's incredibly peaceful.

This is the entrance to one of three Shinto shrines in town. This one is about a 15 minute walk from my house, and it's right across the street from the grocery store I go to all the time. You walk up those stairs into the mountain forests a little before you get to the shrine itself.

This is the actual shrine. You have to wash your hands and mouth in a nearby water trough before you go up to here, where you ring the bell and say a prayer.


A gravestone in the shrine. I don't know if it's a real grave or if it's symbolic, but it was pretty so I took a picture. :)


This is another shrine, but a different type. It's not one of the three main ones in Sannohe, since it's not used for praying. This is a memorial shrine, and it was actually built in 1743. It's also right by the Japanese version of the Home Depot...just sitting there. You'll never guess who the shrine is in memory of though.....

....it's in memory of a Persian horse. These pictures are for you Sarah. :) The area I am in was historically known for breeding amazing war horses. In fact, Sannohe actually means "The Third Stable", and was originally one of seven horse breeding facilities. (By the way, you can click on any of the pictures to see a full size version if you're having problems reading the text.)

The grave marker is apparently where the Persian horse was buried.

A statue in the park. I don't know who it represents though. The park is incredibly large and beautiful, and.....

.....it has a castle in it. It's actually a replica though, the original was destroyed. So, they rebuilt it and made it into a museum.

This is a picture of the whole thing, complete with the museum and information center building.

It also has a shrine. Because really, what castle park would be complete without having a shrine too?

I believe that will do it for this post. I hope you enjoyed my town! I will have more pictures up soon, so look forward to it! ^-^

Fireworks!

These pictures (and one video) are from a festival I went to literally my fifth day in Japan. It was a summer festival in the town next to mine, and they had live music and fireworks. They also had tons of stalls with great festival food, which I think might be my new favorite thing. They sell things like yakitori, crepes, ice cream, and choco-bananas, which are sliced bananas dipped in chocolate, skewered on a stick, and covered in sprinkles. Yum! Really though, all I needed was the fireworks to make me happy. :)
(Btw, ignore the voices in the video, I'm pretty sure it's me freaking out in Japanese about how pretty everything is. >.> My voice is really loud since I was holding my camera up to my face, sorry about that....)

Engrish of the week

This is a promise that I made to my cousin Shauna, who apparently loves the Engrish as much as I do. I'd like to post one of these types of pictures a week, assuming I can find enough material. So, without further ado, I present to you 'Jesus Body':
"Jesus Body!

New discovery to be kept secret from others.
This discovery is a secret.
I can lay it down because I am correct.
We will not make you sorry.
Pleasure to have the real thing.
I really longed for this."

Apparently I've been told this is an anti-cellulite product. Seen in a random store in Aomori City.

Continued...

Hmm, so apparently blogger doesn't like dealing with lots of pictures. I'm also slightly upset that my last post looked so pretty in the preview page, and when it actually got posted the pictures got all moved around and smushed. So....nothing but single, or small pictures from now on. Thanks blogger!

Anyways, to continue with the last post, it was getting too picture heavy for me to fit the last few, so here they are:














These two are pictures of the view from my backyard. This is what you see if you look over my fence. I am very much in the middle of the countryside, but I think it's beautiful.

Last but not least, this is my little blue car:


That's going to be it for now, I know I haven't really said a lot about what I've been doing yet, but I'll get caught up on that. I only got the internet last week, so I'll need a little bit of time still. :P I've been here for a month now, it'll take me a while to organize my pictures and thoughts. Sorry about the messy posts, I'm still learning how to use blogger, and so far it appears to hate me. Til next time!

It's been a while....

So, to everyone who I told this blog would be up and running almost as soon as I got to Japan... I'm sorry. That was a lie. Apparently it takes about a month to get the internet up and running here, so I'll have to use that as my excuse. I did have internet at work, but I mostly used it for e-mailing family, as I felt a bit weird using my work time to blog. I'm going to try and catch this blog up to my most recent activities, so let's get started. :) First of all, I'd like to introduce you all to my house. :) That would be it right at the top of this post. I love it a lot, it's an adorable little thing. Now let's go inside!

This would be the entryway into my house, where you take off your shoes. I do it too, even in my own house. It's just become such a habit since I came here.


This is the hallway, once you get into the house. All the rooms are off of one straight hallway.





These next few pictures are of my living room:































The next two are my bedroom. It's the most Japanese room in the house, it has tatami mats and sliding closet doors. ^-^

















































Next up is the kitchen, and my favorite room in the whole house: my shower/bathtub. The room is huge, and I love to just sit in the tub and relax while I read books.





















































And now to venture outside. :) This is my backyard, complete with my little blue bike, which I use to get around the whole town. Whoo for exercise! To be continued in the next post....