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zaichikarkyI somehow randomly decided to get my lazy ass to work and update.. er semi properly..
This is a pic of my favorite kids class. There is one kid missing, though >_<. I had to take that pic that day, though, cause I made the kids write letters to my parents as an exercise. They're GREAT kids. I only have them for half an hour a week, but I really love teaching them. They're the oldest kids I teach(er, elementary school ones at least) and all great at English.
The rest of the pics I uploaded are in their usual place. Right here- http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v326/MajesticArcanine/japan/
Anyway, so I kind of started writing this post literally half a year ago about what I did, and hopefully I can find it so I can post it. great I found it! Here that is..
I need to update this thing better : (. Here is what I did in… November!
View-O
So first I’ll talk about my little excursion down to the pier near my house that I took sometime late November. The weather was really great so I went to this thing called the view-o. Here’s a picture of it. There was some sort of contest to name that thing, which is one of the most powerful floodgates in all of Japan, and the name “view-o” was chosen. Haha. It sounds great in Japanese, but better in Engrish. I forgot what it means, but the “o” part of it is in Japanese. It serves two purposes. First as a tsunami floodgate. If a tsunami hits, there is a really heavy metallic gate that comes down between the “legs” of it. But it’s primarily used as a sightseeing spot cause you can see a lot of cool things at that height. It’s really cheap to get in (just 100 yen) and it’s a great place to see a sunset as well as Mt Fuji! I went there and took some photos with my cellphone.
Right after that, I made friends with some cats at the park right next to it. Since most cats you find outdoors here are really feral, it’s quite rare to find a nice cat, but this little one was so sweet. There was a big fat one that looked like a fat(ter) Setzer there too : ). So I played with them for a little while
Trip to Heda
So the next weekend I decided to take a boat trip to this little town close to my city. I first got off at the wrong port, but anyway after I got there, I foolishly thought that the things pictured on the brochure I got were within walking distance from the pier. Of course not. I went to the tourist office there and asked them how to find “interesting places” they were like “uhh… you can’t by foot if you want to catch your boat back home” so I was kind of sad, but a VERY nice man decided to show me around! It turns out that he loves Russians cause the city has a deep history with Russians!
So here is how the story goes: in the early 1860s, right after Commodore Perry came to Japan, there was this boat full of Russian sailors that crashed right off the coast of Heda. Heda was an even smaller village back then and because of Japan’s strict xenophobia policy, most Japanese people had never seen westerners before. Suddenly the people of Heda were expected to take care of hundreds of Russians for months till they could safely get back home. Though some officials wanted to kill all of them, it was decided that Japan could benefit from the Russians by learning of their ship-building techniques. During that era, a Japanese ship could not get the Russians back home because of the design. So for 6 months the Russians worked together with the people of Heda to make a new ship. The admiral Putiatin was a very good diplomat and worked with the government to make sure the Russians didn’t cause trouble. Some locals thought they were monsters and drank blood(cause they saw them drinking red wine!) so they were scared, but they learned the Russians were really well behaved. They all became friends and finally when the boat project was finished, Admiral Putiatin named the boat “Heda” and took some of his men home in it. What a great story, huh! I was really impressed. I went to the museum.
Yamaguchi-san is a scholar of his village’s history and he’s visited Russia. He even made his own webpage about it- . You can see some pictures there of Russian-Heda relations. So he took me to that museum and explained everything to me, and I got to read a detailed essay about it in English.There was also a dead sea-creature museum where you saw very unusual sea-creatures preserved in vinegar right next door. It was kind of creepy so I didn’t take too many pics :p. So he also took me up to a scenic spot, a temple, and a gravesite where 2 of the only Russians who died during the stay were buried.
Trip to Hakone.
I was really in luck I happened to meet Yamaguchi san that day. I told him that on Sunday I was planning to go to this place called “Hakone” which is a really famous sight-seeing touristy spot close to where I live. He volunteered to take me there himself :D. So he came and we went in the morning. The center of Hakone is this place called “Ashino Lake”. You travel on a PIRATE SHIP to get to this gondola that takes you up a mountain! It was really fun :D. As you’re traveling, you hear stuff about the history of Hakone and it points out some sights along the lake. So you take the gondola(called rope-way here) up this mountain where there is volcanic activity in the form of steaming sulfur pools! They create a ton of smoke and people cook these eggs in the sulfur pools XD. If you eat one of the eggs, which turns black, it’s said you’d add 7years to your life. I didn’t eat one. I guess I want to die young.
So recently they opened this thing called a “sekisho” up to the public in Hakone. It’s a check-point during the Edo period where guards controlled the flow of womens and arms throughout the country. It was a strict period where women weren’t allowed to travel, so they had to keep any women from going through Hakone. It’s kind of complicated, but a lot of these women were runaways who were forced to live in Edo because they married a shogun. During the Edo period, daimyou( prefectural lords) spent half the time in their domain, and half the time in Edo. However, their families had to stay in Edo as hostages. That is, it was a method to control the daimyou from causing any trouble in their domains. If they started trouble, their families would be murdered. Some women missed their homelands and hated Edo, so they’d escape only to reach a dead end in one of the sekishos. I love history : ). It was really interesting learning about that cause I totally learned about that in Japanese history class. Man, and I thought nothing stuck.
So that’s about all we did there. Those were November’s events. I guess I’ll update for December’s events at… somepoint .
Hm so I wonder how much I should write. Okay, I guess it won't be in so much detail as that november essay. So twice I went to Tokyo. Both times with my friend, Scott. He has the internet on his cellphone so he is very handy to have around :3. That and it's nice not to travel by yourself. I took a bunch of cool pictures the first time I was with him in December because I asked him to take me to Asakusa(where this big buddhist temple is) but I seem to have misplaced those pictures. If I can find them, I'll upload them at some point.... maybe in like a year, but some point. I went a second time to Tokyo with Scott and a friend of mine who recently moved to Tokyo, Yoshimi. I wanted to go to the emperor's gardens, so we did and that was nice. Great weather that day too. I do have pics of that... on page 2 or something like that of that link.
Hm so I went to this place called "Shimoda" twice too. I also misplaced the pics I took of the first time I was there. So at some point I'll find them. Anyway I participated in this short weekend cultural program/homestay. My host family was super nice and they made sukiyaki for me : ). They were pretty rich and lived in this very fancy house. hehe. Shimoda is this really country side place in the southern tip of the penninsula I live on. There isn't much going on there, but it's famous cause Perry opened the first American consulate there and the black ships came there to open up Japan. When I first went to Shimoda, i went with 4 other gaijin and we did cool stuff such as make soba noodles for lunch and Japanese sweets : ). That was about all we did, though... hehe. We also listened to a lecture about the history.
The second time I went was a couple of weekends ago with my coworker. They had this "black ship festival" where they do a bunch of activities and presentations including dancing, military marching, a historical recreation of the treaty signing, etc. We also had a small tour of shimoda and rode on this "black ship" around the bay : ). That was a fun trip. Weather was also better than the last time I went to shimoda.
During spring vacation I went to Niigata. I had some friends there who visited Santa Cruz who I kept in touch with. We didn't really do much. I stayed at over at 2 friends' houses and we went to the arcade XD. their families were very nice, though. Oh and I originally went so I could see one of my friends' HS band concert.
gee I really can't think of anything else I have done. I don't really get out much ^_^*. Usually on the weekend I just prefer to sleep... like 13 hours. Otherwise I've been playing mariokart wii a lot. Oh wait, I mentioned that last time XD. Anyway, I'm still playing so add me!
This is a pic of my favorite kids class. There is one kid missing, though >_<. I had to take that pic that day, though, cause I made the kids write letters to my parents as an exercise. They're GREAT kids. I only have them for half an hour a week, but I really love teaching them. They're the oldest kids I teach(er, elementary school ones at least) and all great at English.
The rest of the pics I uploaded are in their usual place. Right here- http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v326/MajesticArcanine/japan/
Anyway, so I kind of started writing this post literally half a year ago about what I did, and hopefully I can find it so I can post it. great I found it! Here that is..
I need to update this thing better : (. Here is what I did in… November!
View-O
So first I’ll talk about my little excursion down to the pier near my house that I took sometime late November. The weather was really great so I went to this thing called the view-o. Here’s a picture of it. There was some sort of contest to name that thing, which is one of the most powerful floodgates in all of Japan, and the name “view-o” was chosen. Haha. It sounds great in Japanese, but better in Engrish. I forgot what it means, but the “o” part of it is in Japanese. It serves two purposes. First as a tsunami floodgate. If a tsunami hits, there is a really heavy metallic gate that comes down between the “legs” of it. But it’s primarily used as a sightseeing spot cause you can see a lot of cool things at that height. It’s really cheap to get in (just 100 yen) and it’s a great place to see a sunset as well as Mt Fuji! I went there and took some photos with my cellphone.
Right after that, I made friends with some cats at the park right next to it. Since most cats you find outdoors here are really feral, it’s quite rare to find a nice cat, but this little one was so sweet. There was a big fat one that looked like a fat(ter) Setzer there too : ). So I played with them for a little while
Trip to Heda
So the next weekend I decided to take a boat trip to this little town close to my city. I first got off at the wrong port, but anyway after I got there, I foolishly thought that the things pictured on the brochure I got were within walking distance from the pier. Of course not. I went to the tourist office there and asked them how to find “interesting places” they were like “uhh… you can’t by foot if you want to catch your boat back home” so I was kind of sad, but a VERY nice man decided to show me around! It turns out that he loves Russians cause the city has a deep history with Russians!
So here is how the story goes: in the early 1860s, right after Commodore Perry came to Japan, there was this boat full of Russian sailors that crashed right off the coast of Heda. Heda was an even smaller village back then and because of Japan’s strict xenophobia policy, most Japanese people had never seen westerners before. Suddenly the people of Heda were expected to take care of hundreds of Russians for months till they could safely get back home. Though some officials wanted to kill all of them, it was decided that Japan could benefit from the Russians by learning of their ship-building techniques. During that era, a Japanese ship could not get the Russians back home because of the design. So for 6 months the Russians worked together with the people of Heda to make a new ship. The admiral Putiatin was a very good diplomat and worked with the government to make sure the Russians didn’t cause trouble. Some locals thought they were monsters and drank blood(cause they saw them drinking red wine!) so they were scared, but they learned the Russians were really well behaved. They all became friends and finally when the boat project was finished, Admiral Putiatin named the boat “Heda” and took some of his men home in it. What a great story, huh! I was really impressed. I went to the museum.
Yamaguchi-san is a scholar of his village’s history and he’s visited Russia. He even made his own webpage about it- . You can see some pictures there of Russian-Heda relations. So he took me to that museum and explained everything to me, and I got to read a detailed essay about it in English.There was also a dead sea-creature museum where you saw very unusual sea-creatures preserved in vinegar right next door. It was kind of creepy so I didn’t take too many pics :p. So he also took me up to a scenic spot, a temple, and a gravesite where 2 of the only Russians who died during the stay were buried.
Trip to Hakone.
I was really in luck I happened to meet Yamaguchi san that day. I told him that on Sunday I was planning to go to this place called “Hakone” which is a really famous sight-seeing touristy spot close to where I live. He volunteered to take me there himself :D. So he came and we went in the morning. The center of Hakone is this place called “Ashino Lake”. You travel on a PIRATE SHIP to get to this gondola that takes you up a mountain! It was really fun :D. As you’re traveling, you hear stuff about the history of Hakone and it points out some sights along the lake. So you take the gondola(called rope-way here) up this mountain where there is volcanic activity in the form of steaming sulfur pools! They create a ton of smoke and people cook these eggs in the sulfur pools XD. If you eat one of the eggs, which turns black, it’s said you’d add 7years to your life. I didn’t eat one. I guess I want to die young.
So recently they opened this thing called a “sekisho” up to the public in Hakone. It’s a check-point during the Edo period where guards controlled the flow of womens and arms throughout the country. It was a strict period where women weren’t allowed to travel, so they had to keep any women from going through Hakone. It’s kind of complicated, but a lot of these women were runaways who were forced to live in Edo because they married a shogun. During the Edo period, daimyou( prefectural lords) spent half the time in their domain, and half the time in Edo. However, their families had to stay in Edo as hostages. That is, it was a method to control the daimyou from causing any trouble in their domains. If they started trouble, their families would be murdered. Some women missed their homelands and hated Edo, so they’d escape only to reach a dead end in one of the sekishos. I love history : ). It was really interesting learning about that cause I totally learned about that in Japanese history class. Man, and I thought nothing stuck.
So that’s about all we did there. Those were November’s events. I guess I’ll update for December’s events at… somepoint .
Hm so I wonder how much I should write. Okay, I guess it won't be in so much detail as that november essay. So twice I went to Tokyo. Both times with my friend, Scott. He has the internet on his cellphone so he is very handy to have around :3. That and it's nice not to travel by yourself. I took a bunch of cool pictures the first time I was with him in December because I asked him to take me to Asakusa(where this big buddhist temple is) but I seem to have misplaced those pictures. If I can find them, I'll upload them at some point.... maybe in like a year, but some point. I went a second time to Tokyo with Scott and a friend of mine who recently moved to Tokyo, Yoshimi. I wanted to go to the emperor's gardens, so we did and that was nice. Great weather that day too. I do have pics of that... on page 2 or something like that of that link.
Hm so I went to this place called "Shimoda" twice too. I also misplaced the pics I took of the first time I was there. So at some point I'll find them. Anyway I participated in this short weekend cultural program/homestay. My host family was super nice and they made sukiyaki for me : ). They were pretty rich and lived in this very fancy house. hehe. Shimoda is this really country side place in the southern tip of the penninsula I live on. There isn't much going on there, but it's famous cause Perry opened the first American consulate there and the black ships came there to open up Japan. When I first went to Shimoda, i went with 4 other gaijin and we did cool stuff such as make soba noodles for lunch and Japanese sweets : ). That was about all we did, though... hehe. We also listened to a lecture about the history.
The second time I went was a couple of weekends ago with my coworker. They had this "black ship festival" where they do a bunch of activities and presentations including dancing, military marching, a historical recreation of the treaty signing, etc. We also had a small tour of shimoda and rode on this "black ship" around the bay : ). That was a fun trip. Weather was also better than the last time I went to shimoda.
During spring vacation I went to Niigata. I had some friends there who visited Santa Cruz who I kept in touch with. We didn't really do much. I stayed at over at 2 friends' houses and we went to the arcade XD. their families were very nice, though. Oh and I originally went so I could see one of my friends' HS band concert.
gee I really can't think of anything else I have done. I don't really get out much ^_^*. Usually on the weekend I just prefer to sleep... like 13 hours. Otherwise I've been playing mariokart wii a lot. Oh wait, I mentioned that last time XD. Anyway, I'm still playing so add me!
