をさしぶり

June, 12th

Getting on the bus was sad for me but I was also ready to get out of the heat of Shinjuku and onto an air conditioned bus. As the bus was pulling out I noticed that Natsuko san stayed to see me off which I thought was really nice. She took a few pictures of me on the bus as we were leaving. Natsuko san and the rest of her family made me feel so at home. On the bus from Shinjuku to Chino I thought about a few different things like how much I'll miss living with Kosuke's family like I had the last few days and whether I was going to enjoy my two month stay at Canadian farms as much as I might enjoy Jiyugaoka. I wasn't looking forward to having to work in Japan for two months.

I was glad to have those Meiji chocolates that Hatsuko san gave me during that bus ride since I had little other food excluding the 8 pounds of almonds and cranberries I was transporting. About an hour before reaching Chino we took a 15 min. break at a rest spot which was basically a small super market. When I came to Japan 4 years ago we stopped at this same spot and it was pretty cool to be there again 4 years later. Everyone got back on the bus after collecting all the snacks they needed and relieving themselves in the highly advanced Japanese restrooms otherwise known as "toire" pronounced, tow-ee-ray. It turned out that the bus got to Chuoda-Chino, where I need to go, about 25 min. early. Very cool. Now I just needed to foot-it to Hotel Chino which I was told was 5 mins. away if walking. I had no idea where this place was but I saw this tall building with the katakana, "ho", "te" and "ru" which means Hotel (hoteru) on it and figured that was a good start. As I rounded the building I saw a sign in English saying "Hotel Chino". I had to wait about 25-30 mins. before Hossan got there but I got to just chill which is something I didn't really have time for before.  Hossan arrived right when I was told he would, with a few mins. to spare. He speaks English pretty well. (June, 25th, I've realized that Hossan has a Canadian accent when he speaks English which is kind of interesting. One of the common phrases he says is, "Cool, ey?".) Hossan and I had quite a few different conversations on the way to Kaedenoki (the second of Haseyan's restaurant). I found out that he cycled across Australia which is pretty crazy. Apparently he had a few bad experiences in the US like walking out the door in Detroit only to hear gunshots and getting harassed/chased by some sort of gang or something. We finally got to Kaedenoki, I could tell it was Haseyan's immediately from the woodsy naturally made feel and contrast to everything "normal". Going inside Kaedenoki was pretty interesting, I found out that the restaurant is named after Haseyan's daughter Kaede. The restaurant didn't open for another hour or two so I waited a little bit and spoke with Hossan every once in a while but because we weren't too familiar with each other conversation was limited.

I decided to go in the local supa (supermarket) to go get some snacks.  After a few calls from/to Haseyan, rice crackers and sips of Aquarius later Haseyan and Sohei got here. It was awesome meeting Sohei for the first time and seeing Haseyan again. I'm a lot taller than I used to be. Haseyan used to look like a giant to me but now I'm the tallest one here. I didn't immediately know how Sohei and I would like each other but I wanted to make it a point to become friends.  Sohei has a really cool relaxed personality and he is only a few years older than me so it was pretty easy for us to relate.  Haseyan asked me if I was hungry after my trip and if I would like some curry.  I quite enthusiastically replied with yes, I love curry and I'm always hungry and Japanese curry is one of those things that when you make it, you have a lot of it and then you just pile on the rice!


I think that's it for tonight but I hope you enjoyed it =) , June, 25th. 

June, 12th

While we were at Kaedenoki we all sat and ate some curry together of which I've eaten soooooo much of. I'm pretty sure on average we eat curry here about 3-5 times a week lol. I know there was a 6-7 day streak of eating curry everyday about a week ago. After we finished our curry Haseyan asked me If I liked onsen and if I wanted to go. I live for onsen haha. The onsen is a Japanese natural hot spring which everyone bathes naked at. There is a bath for each gender and at some onsen they have co-ed onsens which women don't generally enter because some Japanese guys are excessively perverted lol. On our way to the onsen Haseyan asked me which state I was from, I told him North Carolina and he said that there were two Americans at Canadian farm right now that he thought were from NC. I thought that was a pretty interesting coincidence. Haseyan wanted to stop at Canadian farms before we went to onsen so that's what we did. It was about 8:30 at night by the time we got there so it was really hard to tell what everything looked like. We went into the dinning room and I met everyone. There were the two Americans, John and Johnny, Nozomi, Yasuko and Eriko. Tonight was John and Johnnies last night so we ate a cake in their honor that Eriko san made. Before too long it was late and we had no more time for onsen but it was cool since I got to get to know some new people. I appreciated running into some native speakers since I don't have to explain what I mean to them. I feel like I've learned a lot about communication thus far since I've had to do it in two languages.

Later that evening a few of us, John, Johnny, Eriko, Sohei, Yasuko and I went into this one very large house that Haseyan built (he's built everything around here with his hands of steel! lol but seriously he's a crazy tough mountain of a man) and some of them brought beers inside.  I had been in this house a long time ago in 2005 and it was definitely cool to be back in a lot of the same locations I'd originally been to the first trip.  We all went up stairs into a small room where we all sat down, a few people broke open a few beers and offered me one but I'm not really a beer person and not super big on alcohol. We sat and talked into the early hours of the morning and then parted to go to our own rooms.  I had my room which had a tatami mat floor which was awesome. I also had one of if the only TV that would give you about 10-12 stations.  The coolest station was the one which showed you traffic intersections from the cameras monitoring the road while playing hip hop and otherwise awesome music. I also found out that Japanese soap operas were far cooler than watching Days of our lives.

June, 29th. From now on I plan to blog in weekly increments because I've gotten so far behind and there are so many things I do here at Canadian farms.

さよなら

June, 12th

My last day in Jiyugaoka was a kind of solemn occasion. My friend Kosuke had to leave for school at 7:00 AM to get to school at 9:00 AM and I really only woke up early enough to literally just say hear him say "bye Joshua"... I said "bye" and that was it. I was a really disappointed that our last goodbye was such an unfriendly occasion but I guess the language barrier can't really be helped. Getting up for breakfast was equally strange because it was just me eating alone while Natsuko san bundled newspapers she was going to deliver. I felt kind of left in the dust as though I didn't matter as the rest of every ones lives continued. I had hoped to meet Kosuke again ever since I first made friends with him four years ago and it felt very one sided on our parting.

Natsuko and I were about to head out on a journey to ultimately get me a bus in Shinjuku to Nagano but their were many things to do before that. Hauling my luggage down from the 2nd floor felt more difficult then getting up in the first place. When I finally got down the perilous Japanese made anti-American stairs I made sure to thank Kosuke's grandparents a second time. Hatsuko san handed me a present that she said to eat on the bus to Nagano which turned out to be Meiji chocolates (very similar to Hershey chocolate). I asked them If I could take their picture before I left but I didn't get a response so I just left it at photographing the outside of their house.

After transferring from bus to bus, making a stop at a Japanese bank and hoping trains we got to Shinjuku where we searched for Tokyo tower where the Nikon plaza is on the 28th floor. As we were walking to Tokyo tower we past this discount electronics shop where there was this one older Japanese guy smoking. You'd think whatever some dude smoking, but this white dude came out of the electronics shop who apparently worked there and told the Japanese guy "not to smoke here" while using his index fingers to make a "no good" sign. I thought this was terribly funny considering that some white guy was telling a Japanese guy in Japan not to smoke while speaking Japanese. That is off topic though. Back on topic, I knew that I would enjoy being there but didn't realize exactly how cool it would be. I basically had every lens and camera body that I'd ever want to buy in front of me and the best part was I could use them. Let me tell you getting to hold an $8,000 camera body with a $2,000 lens on the end of it is pretty damn awesome. Needless to say I felt kind of annoyed with my camera afterwords because it just doesn't focus as fast or have as many focus points or shoot as fast... I could keep going but I'd become depressed. I discovered this super cool telescope thingy that I can't remember the correct name for. I've been losing the names of many different things lately because of these new Japanese words. Anyways this telescopemabob could see super far away. Unfortunately I don't have a good way of explaining how far but just know it was FAR. After leaving Tokyo tower we went to the bus station in Shinjuku for my 2:45 hour bus ride to Chuoda Chino where I was told I'd meet Hossan at 5:30 at Hotel Chino. Real quick let me fill you in on how crazy good Japanese transportation is. You often read train schedules that say they arrive at the station at 2:10 for example but then it says arrives at 2:37... Why in the world would they say 2:37??? why not a 2:35 or 2:40? It's because when they say 2:37 they mean they'll arrive at 2:37 lol. It's crazy, I've never gotten anywhere late. You either get somewhere on time or earlier, very efficient.

June 22nd, It's really late and I need to sleep but I'll post some more tomorrow hopefully.

だいがく

June, 11

It was my second day in Jiyugaoka, Tokyo with Kosuke and his family and I decided to go to his University which is an hour and a half away by the way. We left from his house at 11:00 in the morning and walked for probably 20 mins to Jiyugaoka station. The neighborhood in Jiyugaoka is really cool, small streets, lots of flowers and just a nice looking area. Tokyo seems to be such a convenient area to bike in... I wish I had a bike now. Anyways, we got to the station, I bought a ticket. Kosuke used his Net pass (Metro pass?). Seems to be a cheap way to travel though I don't exactly understand it. While we were on the train Kosuke explained to me that his friends were crazy. I didn't know what he meant by that till I met them but they were really cool and glad to meet me as I was glad to meet them. I think we took 3 different trains and two different tickets to get to his college and spent about ¥400 doing it. Kosuke and I were walking down some stairs from the train station when a pretty Japanese girl started talking to him about something and she turned out to be his friend, Masumi. We ran into a few other friends of his before class. Kosuke's first class was a plant cell class I decided to use that time to explore his college and grab some food. I went to the cafeteria and wondered through the line looking at the food, prices and tried to decipher the kanji with no luck. I ended up get katsu, tofu (tofu W/fish flakes and scallions) and rice. All three of those things cost me a total of ¥390, that's really cheap. I knew that both katsu and tofu were normally served with sauce but I didn't know the word for "sauce" (It wasn't till later that I learned that the word for sauce is sauce)... plus I'm not able to read anything but Hiragana. Not too much is spelled with Hiragana and if it is it's mixed with kanji which is very hard (muzukashi). After my rather tasteless meal I walked around Kosuke's campus until his class was over. I met him in front of this one building surrounded by Japanese that were previously ignoring me that turned to be his friends and introduced themselves to me. I really like his friends their all pretty cool people and It was cool that they were so willing to get to know me. Trying to remember all their names was not easy then and because I'm writing this entry 3-4 days late I remember even fewer of them. Everyone had a 10 minute break before english class. Most of Kosuke's friends seemed to be asking about me or talking to me directly. Kosuke's English class was pretty interesting. One kid was studying his electronic dictionary, another was playing gameboy advance and others were talking to each other all while the lecture was going on.  I think the teacher knew that people did all this but he didn't really seem to care. I don't know if that means he's not interested in the success of his students or just that they're repeated trouble makers. There were a select few people that had to read from this one book in English and when it came Kosuke's turn he told me to read it in very broken English but I understood him. As I started to read it to the class the students started laughing as they heard clear English minus the Japanese accent. I didn't really understand what was going on but it seemed as though that wasn't cool but you couldn't really tell from the teacher. The students thought it was hilarious though. Kosuke had to read it anyways. After class we hung out with Kosuke's friends for about 2-3 hours at his university. Masumi san from earlier approached me and started to talk to me as Kosuke was chatting with his other friends. Her English was really good I thought. After a while another of Masumi's friends came over and became the third in our group. After about 30 minutes in the hall we decided to go outside and we ran into even more of his friends. I now had 4 girls asking me questions about various things like who I thought the most attractive guy of the male group was. I thought it was a bit strange but I thought it would be Kosuke. Turns out Kosuke is very popular so my answer was correct I guess. Apparently he's very popular with the girls. One of the girls asked me who I thought the most attractive of the girls were. This became very awkward as I didn't want to offend anyone. I decided to go with "I think so many of the Japanese girls I've seen are pretty so it's really hard to choose"... Anyways It was really fun talking to them and making new friends. It started to get dark and the four people left including Kosuke and I decided to go home. After the second train Masumi went one way and we went the other. As Kosuke and I were walking home after the hour and a 1/2 train ride we stopped by a convenient store of which Japan has plenty of. I got some sweet potato yokan which was pretty good. 

June, 14th, I gotta get going and help with breakfast now at Canadian farm in Nagano.

うれしい

June, 10th

I met my friend Kosuke at Jiyugaoka station and we used his net pass to take a bus to his house which was about 10 minutes away by bus. We walked from the bus stop to his house with me following in a very tired state after traversing all Japan had to throw at me. I saw a woman up ahead who was waving at us and she turned out to be his mother, Natsuko. His grandmother (obaasan) , Hatsuko was also waiting outside for out arrival. After being greeted by Natsuko and Hatsuko respectively in the most welcoming manor I could ask for we went inside to set down my luggage. After getting in the door I took my shoes off and was introduced to his grandfather (ojiisan), Takahashi san. First thing he said to me was "You are welcome in my home" I very much appreciated hearing that especially from the eldest in the family. It really hit me while carrying my huge check in bag up the stairs how little space there is in Tokyo. Once I set everything down I met the 2nd to last member of the family, Sakiko, Kosuke's sister. Sakiko went to Australia when she was 16 or 17, I never found out which and learned quite a bit of english. It was comforting to know that I had a translator for my first few days. For the next few hours I sat at their table snacking a bit, talking with Sakiko and showing some of my photography. After dinner Kosuke and I went down to the convenient store to get some ice cream and Yokan! When we got back I met Kosuke's dad (Otosan), Isao san. He was just as nice as everyone else in the family except he seemed kind of tired from work that night so we didn't talk too much. Kosuke and I watched Japan play someone in a soccer match I wasn't able to figure out their opponents name. We also watched the Yomiuri Giants play the Softbank Hawks in a game of Yakyu (Baseball).

To mention a little bit more about Kosuke's family, Takahashi san was an English teacher for about 40 years. Hatsuko san teaches art in Ginza from what I understand. Natsuko san works at a bakery and delivers newspapers part time. Isao san works at a home for the elderly. Sakiko works for Olympus which is super cool, I didn't expect I would meet anyone who worked for a camera company while I was in Japan let alone my friends sister. Kosuke goes to NUBS, Nippon University of Bioresearch and something else with an S.

よこそ

June, 10th

I decided not to make a separate blog but to instead use this one since I can't think of a good name. Here's how things happened from Atlanta airport and on,

I realized as I was boarding the plane how much I hate flying and then I realized I quoted Obi-wan Kenobi... in my mind. Pretty cool. The flight however was not pretty cool and while I was checking in to the airport and having all my luggage scanned, strip searched, hosed down, etc a man came up to me and said, "she dropped your computer..." me, "oh really?!". If there's one thing you don't do it's drop a $2,000 piece of equipment, especially when it's MINE. I just noticed later today that the screen leans to the left I believe and that isn't good. I'd like to say I gave her a stern talking to but that's not really my style especially when trying to catch a plane. The flight was boring just like it was last time except there were better movies this time.


I had been pretty nervous about not being able to get through customs and all that but everything went smoothly. Tip for people, always check what they want to hear on the form you get on the plane it makes getting into a country far easier. Extra tip, don't say that you have bombs or weapons... bad idea trust me (I have a friend who proved this point...). So all-in-all getting through the airport was easy it was just the fact that not many people spoke my language that threw me for a bit of a loop. I made the mistake of assuming getting from Narita airport to Jiyugaoka in Tokyo would be simple... I was proven wrong. I felt like I was in basic training with all the stuff I was lugging around. Trying to figure out the Japanese transportation system while avoiding getting run over by people who actually knew where they were going and doing it all after a 13 hour plane ride after sleeping for 3 hours previously really sucked. The very first train I got on went from Narita to Nippori. I didn't realize it but only cars 2-7 are non-smoking cars, the one I was in I soon found out to be a smoking car. I was asked to show my tickets to a train worker and apparently I got on the wrong train or was just missing a ticket since he kept telling me I need a 2nd ticket. He let me get off at Nippori where I had to go to Shibuya which is one of the busiest stations in Japan. I was lucky because on the escalator I ran into an American (I assume) and a English speaking Japanese man and they helped me get a ticket to Shibuya. Keep in mind the whole time I was riding these trains I was wondering how in the world I would contact my hosts since my cellphone didn't work, even after I was told it would by Verizon. That created lots of stress. I finally arrived in Jiyugaoka and was walking around on the train platform wondering what I should do. I decided a bench and a drink would be good to help clear my head and think my options through thoroughly. With my cellphone out of service all I had left was my beloved macbook and skype, thank the heavens for skype. In a moment of extreme faith and no other options I flipped my pasokon (personal computer) open and got some wi-fi by some miracle. Everything is encrypted there, makes it a little harder to get internet. So anywho, I got wi-fi, checked my email to see if I got mail from my host family and I did. I then used the phone number I got from the email to call their home, using skype of course, and arranged for someone to pick me up. Within 15 minutes Kosuke, my friend from 4 years ago, found me and we went to his home in Jiyugaoka.

That's the end of the story for now. I'm tired.