A wedding, bowling, Thanksgiving, and football

It's been a busy weekend.

Friday we had off for the "Labor Thanksgiving" holiday. More akin to labor day in the US than Thanksgiving, for the most part I spent it hanging around my apartment, studying, and cleaning a bit. It's actually been a while since I've had a free day like that, it was nice (^-^)

Yesterday (Saturday), I headed up to T-town to drop in on the wedding of one of my taiko group members. I wasn't technically a guest of the wedding, I was just there to see the drumming performance put on by some of the group for the reception. They gave me very specific instructions NOT to dress fancy, seeing as they would all be in their takio clothes. I felt a little funny not getting dressed up for a wedding, but since they told me to be casual, I did. I opted for a nice sweater and some jeans; and immediately regretted it when I got to the wedding >.<

Everyone looked so great! Of course they were all very gracious and actually quite thrilled that a foreigner was there, but I couldn't help but wish I had worn different pants. I tried my best to blend in with the wallpaper when I was in the banquet room (or heck, in the hallway outside), but being the only person in there with blond hair I managed to attract quite a lot of attention without doing anything at all. Ah well, c'est la vie.

The bride looked great. In fact, something I didn't know about Japanese weddings, they change clothes at least three times. 3 times! Can you imagine? And the kimono alone costs a small fortune to rent. I got to see all three outfits my friend wore, a beatiful green kimono, a stunning white western wedding gown, and a pretty black party dress. Her new husband had to change three times as well, from traditional Japanese wedding clothes to a white tux and then a black tux. It was amazing.

Since we weren't regular guests we actually got a little bit of the behind-the-scenes and got to spend some time with them where they were changing and whatnot. I probably got to chat with her more than most of the guests, ha ha
The taiko was pretty good too ^_^

After the taiko performance was finished we said our goodbyes and I headed off to meet some of the teachers from MJH for bowling as part of this Takayama teacher's-union type thing. It was technically for teacher's who were under 30 I think, and I had fun pointing out to 3 of the 4 guys who came from Miya that they were all over 30, ha ha

Japanese bowling shoes. Don't they remind you of the velcro shoes from the 80's? And they're purple too! ^-^



After bowling I ran around Takayama trying to find ingredients and utensils for making pie. You may be asking yourself, "self? why would she want to make a pie? I mean apart from the obvious reason that pie is delicious and everyone loves pie." It's a reasonable question.

The answer is that today, the ALT's of Takayama (and some local friends) had Thanksgiving dinner. At my apartment!

It was pot-luck, and we ended up with tons of yummy dishes. Including stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, creamed corn, tofu, two scrumptious noodle dishes, bread, cheese, and fruit

We even dressed up my humble, yet beloved, kotatsu for the occasion in a turkey-day table cloth

We then proceeded to stuff ourselves silly, just like at home. In fact, I don't think I've been this full since I came to Japan...

Kyle made a new friend...

And then, after the third round (for some), we broke out the dessert...

Including my pie! (^-^)/ And I am really quite proud of it. I made it from scratch. There is no such thing as pre-made crust here. I made the crust, rolled it out, peeled and sliced the apples, made the filling, even made a pretty lattice top

And on top of all that, I baked it without an oven. That's right people, I cooked that pie in my microwave. Then I stuck it in the toaster oven to brown and actually toasted the top a little more than I would have liked but it still tasted good. I was worried the bottom wouldn't have cooked fully but it turned out great.

Angela also made a scrumptious apple dessert from scratch and another ALT sent along some chocolate desserts so we ended up with a fantastic sweet finish to dinner.


After we finished eating, it was such a beautiful day today that we just HAD to go outside.




We decided to head down by the river to play a little touch football, since we didn't have the luxury to watch the college games on tv. We new folk from CO are apparently a bit more sporty than the old group of ALTs as we were, along with a couple of others, the ones most pushing to get outside to toss the ball around. I guess the spontaneous football game just didn't happen here very often over the last couple of years. To me, it just felt like what always ends up happening at this kind of gathering...

Anyway, I went down to the river with the 4 guys to toss the ball around before the rest of the girls showed up. Isaac, Kraig, you would have been proud to see how well I threw that ball. Perfect spirals, good power. Heck, I threw it better than half of the guys there, and definetly better than all of the other girls. Not to brag or anything... but I was awesome. ha ha

Once everyone showed up we played some touch football and of course, the team I was on won. It was actually akin to the CU/ Nebraska game, we beat the pants off the other team.



I'm actually in the second picture there. Can you find me? Ha ha ha. Where's Jen? I'll give you a hint in the next one I'm chasing the ball before it bounces into the river, but my head got cut off O_o


After football we headed back inside, ready for round two of dinner....

Tacos! mmmmm.

And then we watched episodes of The Simpsons. It was such a fantastically American day - Thanksgiving dinner, football, and The Simpsons. I can't imagine a better way to spend a holiday away from home ^_^

Osaka ni ikimashita!

First of all, let me send out a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has responded so far to my request for materials! You guys are great. Really, amazing ^_^ I love the stuff you've come up with so far.

Now, on to the main point of this post. Last weekend, I went to Osaka. This all came together in about 3 days; I received a text message from my friend Theresa asking if I wanted to get out of town for the weekend on Wednesday and by Saturday morning we were on our way! WARNING - this post is huge. Really. Lots of pictures. It's been 11 days since my last post, what did you expect?

Osaka is about a 5 hour bus ride from Takayama, so we had to catch the early one to make the trip worth it. We left at 7am and arrived a little before noon. I did NO planning whatsoever for this trip. I was completely at the mercy of Theresa's planning whims. Lucky for me, she did a great job ^_^

So after we arrived and found food we headed out to Osaka Castle, which is apparently the most visited castle in all of Japan. Not to miss out on our chance to be lemmings, we made sure our trip included a tour of it.

Our first stop: the moat.

To our lucky surprise, it turned out there was some kind of marching band competition going on in the castle grounds that day. There were several bands, and all the show tunes made us feel like we were in the Magic Kingdom instead of Osaka. Plus, I think we may have been on tv somewhere...

The castle is quite beautiful, and like most castles in Japan, was completely rebuilt in the 20th century. It's been destroyed at least 2 times that I can remember; once by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1st Shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate) and once during the Meiji Restoration. There's really nothing left of the original castle at all. The latest version was built in the 1930's I think, and had to be restored again after WWII.



The inside is a museum, the view from the top was great. Especially with the fall colors

Hey Patty, do those shoulder straps look familiar? heh heh



After that we headed over to the National Bunraku Theater, where Theresa had managed to reserve the LAST TWO tickets for that night's Bunraku performance. We were really lucky, usually the shows sell out months in advance. Plus, they only do performances during part of the year. Bunraku is a form of traditional puppet theater, kind of like Kabuki but with puppets. It takes 3 puppeteers to move one puppet, and they are all visible on stage during the performance. The puppets are about half life-size, and all but the head puppeteer are covered head to toe in black. In fact, with their pointy hoods I thought they looked rather like executioners...

Anyway, if you're curious about it you can read more about Bunraku here and here.

After we picked up our tickets and found lockers for our bags, we headed out to see what we could find nearby.

There are some great shopping areas near where the theater is and there were tons of people out getting takoyaki (fried octopus balls). Everybody said we had to try takoyaki in Osaka. I'd already had it in Takayama, but who wants to be the only person to visit Osaka and not have fried octopus balls? I mean seriously.
A tako:

And some takoyaki!

The place was just crawling with people. I've gotten so used to being in my little village/ occasionally in the "city" of Takayama that it feels kind of strange to be around so many people.

See all that black down the street there? That's because it's full of heads of black hair...

After wandering for a while we headed back to the theater for our show. It was really cool, but I have to admit the first performance was kind of boring and it was really long. Plus, I've been sick so I was wiped out and it was hot.... all this to say that yes, I fell asleep during the first performance. There's about an hour intermission in between performances during which we had some dinner, and then there's a second performance that is much shorter and was way more interesting. I stayed awake for that one ^_^ All told, it was about 4 hours from start to finish. I don't have any pictures from that cause they won't let you take any. But click the links above and you'll be able to see what it was like.

The Bunraku ended about 8:30pm, and from there we headed to Spa World, an enormous onsen (spa) with two huge floors - one European themed and one Japanese themed. Men and women are split - one to each floor, alternating. We happened to hit it when the women's spa was the European one. It was absolutely INCREDIBLE. Once we got there, that is. We took the subway and asked for directions to find it but once we got out onto the street we almost headed in the exact opposite diection from the spa. Lucky for us, I shouted "Spa World!" as we emerged from the metro and an awesome local named Shun heard me and stopped us before we trekked the wrong way. In fact, he was good enough to walk us all the way to the spa! His English wasn't bad either. Not great, but not bad. Between our terrible Japanese and his English we managed to find out that he was born and raised in Osaka, works in the fashion industry, and is taking a trip to Laos this week actually ^_^

(it says "supawa-rudo")
We stayed at Spa World for 3 hours, so it was after midnight before we finally emerged. I can't exclaim enough how great I felt after that too. There's just nothing like walking around naked and gettting into baths with other people, ha ha ha Seriously though, it was really rejuvinating. Especially since I was sick. I'm sure the other patrons appreciated that ^_^

Our next plan was to drop off our bags at our "hotel" and then head to a local club that had a really low cover and a good reputation. Finding our "hotel" turned out to be quite a challenge; once again we asked for directions and thought we knew where we were going but went in the exact opposite direction. We weren't in the greatest part of town and it was really late so we decided to just hop in a cab once we realized we were lost. And then the cab driver had no idea where to go! So we ended up calling the place and having him talk to the driver. When we got there we found, to our horror, what exactly 1500 yen a night gets you in Osaka:

We knew they were 3 tatami rooms, but still, we had no idea they would be that bad. Then again, they cost 15 bucks. It was so depressing we decided to put both futons in one room - which was a challenge as the room was only 2 tatami wide and each futon is about a tatami and a half wide.

And then, after all that, we found out that the "hotel" (ok, it was more like a hostel) had a curfew! Midnight. And since it was after midnight when we arrived, we were totally locked in. So that killed the club plan. Looking back though, it's probablly better we didn't go out seeing as I was sick and it was like 1 am already o_O

Sunday we got up and headed out to the Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium. It's one of the largest in the world, and it has it's own Ferris Wheel. Because all self-respecting large Japanese cities have Ferris wheels.





Yes, that's a Christmas tree behind me. And yes, the majority of Japanese people are not Christian. That doesn't stop them from celebrating it anyway ^_^

The aquarium was awesome. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking. Inside we saw... lots of fish!



We found Nemo...

And Santa is alive and well and scuba diving in Japan



AND, there were jellyfish


The aquarium is situated right on Osaka Harbor - yeay Pacific Ocean!



We did some shopping in the marketplace nearby, got some lunch, and then headed over to the Umeda Sky Building. Where they are, yep, celebrating Christmas!!!

It's a georgous building, with some amazing architecture

See those two lines going into the hole at the top? This is what they are:



The view from the top was awesome. But really windy. In fact, they have specific instructions NOT to open umbrellas (who does that?!?!) or take food or drinks out there. Or hats.





The ride up and down is in a glass elevator. I thought it was great! Theresa less so.


Phew! After all that we headed back to the station to catch our 5 hour bus home...

And when we arrived it was snowing >.< I woke up to this on Monday morning:

Quite a bit different, hu? It was so warm and beautiful in Osaka, it was quite a shock coming back home. But, I have my fabulous squishy dolphin, Taro, to keep me company ^_^

I shall call him squishy and he shall be mine, and he shall be my squishy. Come on, squishy Come here, little squishy....