In the US we call them "hurricanes". Some places say "cyclone".
In Japan, these storms are called 台風, tai fuu.
Whatever you want to call it, there's one heading this way, and besides being the first one to make landfall since 2007, it's also supposed to be the most powerful in a decade (according to the AFP).
And it's projected to take a path that runs smack over Gifu prefecture, including Takayama (from the Japan Meteorological Agency, with a small modification ^^)
The Japan Meteorological Agency is predicting wind speeds of 98 mph near the center, and gusts of 123 mph by the time it reaches us here. This is down from 134 mph gusts when it makes landfall on the southeastern coast of Honshu tonight. No sign of the wind yet, although the rain has been falling here since this afternoon, steadily getting stronger and stronger.
In light of this, the JR Lines will not be running (the trains will stop) and all classes in Takayama elementary and junior high schools are cancelled tomorrow. Meaning the kids don't go to school. Lucky guys.
The teachers however, being dedicated civil servants (including yours truly), are still required to go. Why, exactly, is a little beyond me, but such is life in Japan. At least up here in the mountains of land-locked Gifu prefecture we don't have to worry about storm surges... just lots of rain and wind. Bring on the ponchos and rubber boots!
--Edited 10/08/2009 5pm: well what was supposed to be the biggest storm in a decade turned out to be surprisingly weak. Light rain and a few gusts of wind is all we got here; I think we had more damage from the torrential rains we had in June and July than from the "typoon"! At least I was around to experience the last one, in September 2007 =)
I used to really dislike the color of my eyes. For some reason, I always wanted them to be blue. A lot of people in the Scandinavian half of my family (I'm roughly a quarter Swedish and a quarter Danish, and half Irish) have blue eyes, and I always thought that was a better combination with blond hair than what I've got. Which is sort of a greenish-blue, that can look mostly blue, depending on the colors I am wearing. But, in reality, they are sort of an odd light-green, largely due to these rings of yellow right next to my pupils.
I always hated those rings. It was like they cheated me out of my blue eyes.
At home, since there are so many kinds of eye color, and mine aren't a brilliant shade of anything, they didn't really stand out. And then, I moved to Japan. Where any eye color other than a very deep brown is a rare thing of wonder. I get complimented on my eyes all the time here, and recently I've come to like them more and more.
One fifth grade student in particular loves to just stare into my eyes, for loooooooong stretches of time. To be honest, it's kind of unnerving. And then she'll comment (in Japanese, of course) "oh, Jen-sensei! Your eyes are green! Why are they green? Why are foreigner's eyes not brown?"
This of course leads to a discussion about how not all foreigner's eyes are blue or green; there are many eye colors, and many kinds of foreigners. I'm constantly fighting a (losing) battle to show that being American isn't a race, it's a nationality. You can find any kind of person from anywhere in the world in the US, and they can all be Americans. It doesn't help that I fit the blond-hair blue (or in this case, green)-eyed American stereotype almost to a T when making my case...
Anyway, stereotypes aside, this little girl gave me what is probably the best compliment I have ever received about my eyes; and in the process completely changed my opinion of them. One day, while referring to the (formerly detested) rings of yellow in my otherwise bluish-green irises, she said to me:
"I can see the sun in your eyes!"
Now who could continue to dislike them after hearing something like that? =)
Have I ever mentioned they sell bread here with no crust? Or how you can buy sandwiches at the convenience store with no crust? It's so funny how unpopular it is here! And the crust-less bread? It's sold in boxes
Plecoglossus altivelis. According to wikipedia, it is a relative of the smelts and is placed in the order Osmeriformes. Native to the Palearctic ecozone, it occurs in rivers, lakes, and coastal waters of western Hokkaidō in Japan southward to the Korean Peninsula, China, and Taiwan.
And it's eaten WHOLE. (x_x)
It's quite popular here, showing up on menus, at festivals, and with an unnerving frequency in my school lunch.
There are a few ways to catch ayu, like fly fishing, Cormorant fishing (Gifu City is actually quite famous for this), and by taking advantage of their territorial behavior using a decoy, known as ayu-no-tomozuri.
The decoy method involves the use of a captive ayu and a long fishing rod. And by long I do mean loooooooooong
Last month I had the opportunity to try my hand at catching ayu. We went to a river in the town of Kamitakara; which, though technically in Takayama, lies about an hour's drive north of the city (^_^)b A friend of a friend is an avid ayu fisherman and was kind enough to provide us with rods and tackle, and captive ayu. And seeing as I've never been able to skewer minnows or worms, let alone hand-sized fish, he also bait the hooks for us too ^^ It's actually a fairly cruel process - the bait ayu is attached to the line by the mouth and also has a second, free-swinging hook that is attached to it's back end. so close to freedom... You then introduce the decoy into areas likely to have ayu and wait for one to attack the intruding fish and hook itself.
It's kind of an interesting process. My only prior experience involving the use of live bait has only been with small creatures (like minnows). You can't feel them on the end of the line, so the second you feel it pull you know you've got something. But in this situation, since there's already one live ayu on the hook, it pulls and wiggles around as the fish goes here and there on the end of it. I was tricked more than once into thinking I had something. In the end, I managed to hook three, and catch two. One lucky little guy got away from me the one time I was left to myself, while our fisherman was off helping my friend, ha ha ha
And the two fish I did catch? Presents to our fisherman for showing us a great time. Cause I sure as hell wasn't going to eat them myself! =D
I've always liked baseball. I spent several birthdays watching the Rockies play at Coors Field (and before them the Denver Zephyrs - who else remembers them!!) growing up. I always caught at least one game every summer, and in my previous job as an engineer, was lucky enough to work with some awesome people who took us to the opening day game every year (you rock Dave E!!) ^^
In Japan, baseball is pretty big.
In fact, I might even go so far as to say it's more popular here than at home. We like to call baseball "America's pastime", but really, I think Japan loves it more.
Sure, the US has more pro teams, more money, the best players, and a longer history with the sport. We invented it, and it's definitely an important part of our culture. But consider this: there are 12 pro and 12 minor league teams in Japan; a country roughly the size of California. And, unlike just about all other imported sports, they have a Japanese word and kanji for it. In Japanese, baseball is 野球 yakyu. The first character means "field", the second is "ball". Soccer is サッカ sakka, basketball is バスケットボール basukettobo-ru, volleyball is バレーボール bare-bo-ru (no "v" in Japanese), golf = ゴルフ gorufu.... you get the idea. All in katakana, all words imported from another language. But baseball? Baseball is yakyu.
These days I mostly watch my junior high teams play, though I have seen a couple of pro games. Occasionally, if I am feeling especially playful, I'll even go practice with the teams after school.
What I haven't seen a lot of are high school games, since I don't teach there. And high school baseball is big here. Like, REAL big.
Culturally speaking, it's everywhere. In manga (Japanese comics), tv shows, movies, you name it. This summer the big thing to see is the movie version of the popular tv drama (itself an adaptation of the manga) "ROOKIES". From wikipedia: Rookies is the story of an amateur teacher, Koichi Kawato, who is faced with the challenge of guiding a high school baseball club composed of delinquents. The students are wary of him and often threaten Kawato, but he refuses to abandon them and continuously speaks highly of recognizing their dreams. Eventually, the team is assembled and they dedicate their time to achieve their dream of going to Koshien.
A group of thugs and bullies, redeemed through their dream of going to Koshien.
You may be wondering what this magical place is. Amusement park? No. Tropical Island? No.
Koshien is a ballpark. A professional baseball stadium, located in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and home of the Hanshin Tigers.
It's also the location of the two High School Baseball Tournaments, held every March (since 1924) and August (since 1915). In fact, Koshien stadium was built to host the tournaments. It opened in 1924, but didn't become the home of the Tigers until 1936. The tournament games even take precedence over the pro ones - if they need to be rescheduled the Tigers have to postpone any conflicting home games (^_^)b
The games held at Koshien are the culmination of tournaments all over the country. While the one in the spring (the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament) is more selective (only 32 teams), the summer National High School Baseball Championship is more popular. It consists of 49 teams - one from each prefecture, and two each from Tokyo and Hokkaido (since there are so many schools there - in Tokyo because of population density and Hokkaido because it's huge). So basically, every year in August all the prefectures play against each other in one huge showdown.
The games are quite popular, even being broadcast on the television network NHK.
And this year, I went ^^
My former JTE, who is arguably a bigger baseball fanatic than I; actually, not even arguably, he IS a bigger fan than me; and I went to Koshien Stadium for one exceptionally awesome day of baseball. Since the games are so popular, we decided to go relatively early in the tournament - on the 4th day. And since Takayama is pretty far from Nishinomiya (between Osaka and Kobe), we had a looooooooong day of it too.
Because of the popularity of these games, getting tickets ahead of time is extremely difficult. All of the pre-game tickets were sold out before we even had a chance to try to get them, so we had to buy our tickets the day of the game. And you can only buy game-day tickets at the stadium.
On that day there were four games, the first started at 830 am. This meant we had to leave Takayama by 4am.
Yes, 4 am.
2 hour drive to Gifu City, then a 1.5 hour shinkansen ride to Osaka, and another short train ride to Nishinomiya got us to the stadium around 8am Bought our tickets, ran inside, and got some pretty awesome seats! Under the shade, and right behind home plate ^^
I've mentioned before about some of the differences in watching baseball games in Japan vs the US. For the most part, these games went down the same way my junior high games go, except with a WAY bigger audience.
To start, both teams run out and greet each other with a bow and "onegaishimasu!" (one of those ubiquitous Japanese phrases that is used all the time and defies all attempts to give it a blanket translation; it comes from the word for "wish" , often means "please", and in this case is basically "let's play a good game!")
This is then followed by what I have termed the "game siren" - sounds like an air-raid or tornado siren and marks both the beginning and end of the game.
When I go see a junior high game, usually the cheering consists of the family of the team members (and at Miya's games, mostly just myself, ha ha ha). But since high schools are much larger, and also because of the awesomeness of getting to play at Koshien, the cheering for these games more closely resembled the pro games I've seen.
There were four games on this day, which we watched, one after the other, from 830 am on. I didn't know any of the teams, although I did recognize the names of some of the cities they were from. My JTE knows more than me and was able to inform me a little, but for the most part we just enjoyed watching the games. Which basically went like
And
^^The boy at bat in those videos' name is "Momiyama". And wasn't it SO kind of that man to stop right in front of me when the runner came in from 3rd??!? //sarcasm
At the end of each game, the players go back to the infield and once again greet each other, this time with an "arigatou gozaimashita!" greeting of thanks. And then the siren plays again.
The winning team will then remain on the field as their school flag is raised and their school song is played on the PA The losing teams all collect some of the dirt from the field to keep as a souvenir of getting to play in the tournament. Apparently a tradition started in 1949.
So there we sat, enjoying the games, for 8 hours. And potentially ending up on TV, as the commentator box was just in front of us ^^ Does anyone else find it amusing that the camera is being protected by a straw mat? ha ha ha ha ha, I love Asia!
We finally had to leave around 430 pm to catch the train back to Gifu City. So it was time to bid farewell to Koshien Leaving that early meant we missed most of the last (and most exciting, of course) game of the day. The score was tied when we left, both teams well-matched, a real showdown of baseball ability. It even went to extra innings. A real tragedy not to see it.
...but... when there's a will, there's a way. This is Japan! THE land of technology and gadgets.
We watched the rest of that game with our cell phones on the train v(^_^)v
A six hour hike snaking up a volcano, following a column of headlamps through the dark, and reaching the summit in time to witness a breathtaking view of the sunrise. A timeless tradition that everyone in Japan should do at least once in their lives. The summit of Mount Fuji.
This is not that story.
This is the story of how I had planned to climb Mt. Fuji, but ended up visiting the city of Yokohama instead.
... let me explain.
Back in July I made a plan with a friend of mine to climb Mount Fuji in August. Since he works for a Japanese company, we decided that it would be best to do it on a weekend and settled on August 8 for the day of our ascent.
As luck would have it, he managed to talk his boss into giving him a day off on the Friday before, so we bumped our plan up a day in the hopes of a slightly smaller crowd and more sleep before going back to work on Monday.
Unfortunately, fate interceded, and he ended up having to work that day anyway. To make a long story short, we decided with the extra day of work and the likelihood of the weather being bad anyway, we'd have to postpone our journey. This now meant I had a day by myself in the Tokyo area, when all of my friends there would be working.
What to do? After my initial disappointment at not getting to climb the mountain, I decided to be an optimist and make lemonade out of the lemon that was handed to me. I went to Yokohama ^^
All I knew about Yokohama before this trip was that it is the second largest city in Japan, and that it was the first port opened (in 1859) after the arrival of Matthew Perry. I had also heard it described as the favorite city of several of my fellow ALTs, more than enough reason to check it out.
Since I hadn't brought my guidebook with me (it's quite heavy and who wants to haul that up a mountain?) I had virtually no information whatsoever on what to do once I arrived in the city. So I went to the tourist information center, got a map, and off I went.
My first stop was the shopping area Motomachi and the former foreign residence area, Yamate. Here you can find lots of western-looking houses, shopping and a Catholic cemetery ^^ Then I headed over to check out the Chinatown, rumored to be the best in Japan (and, apparently, the largest in all of Asia). It was full of shops (a nice, air-conditioned break from the rather intense heat) and restaurants and as any self-respecting Chinatown should, comes complete with a Starbucks. It also has a lovely Chinese temple, Kantei-byo so full of color! Next I wandered over to the harbor to lounge in the breeze and shade of Yamashita Koen. Where I actually fell asleep for a while in the glorious, glorious grass. Oh, how I miss grass! They just don't have a lot of it here. After my nap, I decided to take a harbor cruise. While it was nice to get out on the water and enjoy the breeze, as far as harbor cruises go, this one was fairly so-so. Things I saw: The bay bridge The bay The city The pier The only non-Japanese person on the boat ^^ The pier was pretty interesting though. Not only does it look like a spaceport out of a Star Wars movie, it has a fantastic wood and grass promenade on the top Tell me that doesn't look like a skateboarding fantasy.
Down a little further from the pier is the Minato Mirai 21 area, full of shops and restaurants and an amusement park. It also has a lovely red-brick warehouse (that has been converted into many shops and restaurants) called Aka Renga Souko where they had set up a large sandbox and were preparing for a rock concert on the following day. I'm not entirely sure who they were, but their dress-rehearsal made for awesome accompaniment to my tasty BLT dinner ^^ On the way back to the station to catch a train back to Tokyo, I strolled past "Cosmo World", home of what was the largest Ferris wheel in the world when it was built in 1989 (and still the world's largest clock) And a beautiful view of the Landmark Tower
Not quite Mount Fuji, but all things considered, not a bad way to spend a Friday either (^_^)
Hi, my name is Jen. Born and raised in Colorado, and a world traveler from an early age. I worked for an environmental consulting firm in Denver for 2 years before leaving it all behind for adventures in Japan for 3. Now I'm back, and working on the next phase of my life, and facing that age old question: what the hell am I going to do?
