mind your Ds and Qs (i'm not talking about Dairy Queen, people)

when you visit me in japan (as kara did recently), here are some ground rules:
DO visit all the good restaurants with me because we both eat meat! meat rules!


DO have a rousing night of old-people-meets-new-people karaoke with favorites like Gold Digger and Dance Dance.


DO eat the delicious breakfasts i make, like orange, chocolate chip, walnut scones.


DO get dressed up in antique kimono that cost over $10,000 and eat traditional desserts like yokan.



but lord, DO NOT come down with anything vaguely resembling the flu if you were recently in the US, or the still-panicky health department will send you to get tested for the swine flu. this involves having a swab stuck so far up your nasal cavity that your brain hears a knock at the door.
kara and i had a really great visit, but the day she was supposed to leave, she showed up at my school with a high fever and sore throat. when she called the health department (she was required to call them every day of her trip to assure them she was in good health), they sent us to the hospital for a swine flu test. we weren't even allowed through the main entrance. a nurse with a very secure mask resembling a cloth duck bill met us and told us to stay in the car. when they called us in the back basement entrance of the hospital, the doctor and nurse who met us were in full-body cloth hazmat suits! not a speck of skin or hair or clothing was open to the air.
on the left is the wonderful teacher helping us, miss shirota, with her signature style of wearing a mask over just her mouth. totally effective, uh huh.


the hospital basement with some machine thingie.


the depressing room in which we had to wait for the results. very prison-esque.


the exam was short, and kara came up negative for swine flu, but they still wanted to keep her in the hospital for several days while her fever went down. the only other choice was my house. of course it was ok for her to stay with me, but it meant putting off the rest of her trip.
we returned home, and i went back to work. soon someone came to inform me that i was taking a mandatory two days off so i wouldn't threaten the rest of the school with the flu i didn't have. fine! two free nice days off (no complaints)...cooped up with a sick person. so it was no surprise that i came down with the same thing the day kara got back on the road.
my sore throat got worse and worse and worse. fearing strep throat, i headed to the doc, and though he only looked in my throat (no culture needed, i guess), and after the obligatory brain-scramble swab, he told me it wasn't strep or the flu. however, since he prescribed an antibiotic, i didn't complain. i figured that should kill it.
in japan, you can either swallow the fun powder or fill your own capsules, which i decided to do, just because it was fun playing apothecary.

grey today

the sky is grey when i wake up, but the air isn't heavy. the birds are singing, and last night's invisible sprinkle has cleaned the air of blooming jasmine. i feel quiet. as mom can tell you, this can translate to grouchy if you try to talk to me on mornings like this, but i'm alone, so i have my black mango tea with light chocolate cookies in silence. when i was young, i was obsessed with the idea of tea and crumpets, though i had no idea what crumpets were. i imagined they were crumbly, cylindrical cookies. maybe they had chopped nuts like a scone. when i was told what they were really like, i ignored the truth and kept imagining them the way i always had. i've still never had one, and i actually just looked them up online to see what they really look like...like an english muffin, how boring.
i get dressed in cloudy colors and zip up my brooding sweatshirt. it's a hoodless hoodie; a soft, fitted jacket that feels perfect on days i want to be left alone. there's a dagger pin at the neck from a deadly squire oven mitt i bought in new york. the black is worn to grey and the sleeves are holey, thanks to planned obsolescence. i would like it a little better if there wasn't a big hole in the armpit. i've sewn it together twice, but it keeps disintegrating. an armpit hole is as embarrassing for a shirt as a tear in the rear is for pants.
i take small steps down the hill to school, enjoying the new smells rising from the trees and flowers. a plant i don't know drops tiny white petals on the path from where it perches in the hillside overhead. i know i'll miss this two-minute walk when i live in the city. it's the perfect filter for the day: differently-colored flowers every season, fresh smells, sun and rain. i try to hold onto that feeling when i face the next 8 hours indoors. today i breathe in a pleasant woodsmoke smell and try to time my tiny steps so i'll arrive at the road in-between big groups of students, but i'm not quite successful. two girls who normally yell my name from a block away see me, but thankfully they just say hello and keep talking. i change my shoes and trudge inside without seeing anyone, a relief. the office is still quiet because the first bell hasn't rung yet, so i manage to install myself at my desk without much trouble. when the meeting ends, i plug in my headphones and tune out everything except you. the computer picks music for my mood perfectly: slowdive, hum, jason mraz, azure ray, jose gonzales, sun kil moon, iron & wine.
last night, i peeked outside my front door to see where the exhaust smell filling my house was coming from. a big spider fell off the door, and i swear it tripped over its long legs and staggered backwards. this is going to be a very big insect year. it's only may!

so, as i finally come out of my quiet mood (oh ****! now i'm having a disproportionate amount of rage because someone threw away my milk, and i already brewed my coffee. angry face!), i should get to news. wow! it's been a month since i've written. that was quick. the exercising continues, though with actual school going on, i have a little less creative energy to think about dancing. i'm still running and lifting weights, and my arms are showing real improvement...definition noticeable enough that one of the ripped baseball boys asked me the other day if i've been lifting weights! it's so nice to have arms that are not just weak, shapeless tubes. of course, it makes fitting into the sleeves of delicate japanese shirts nigh impossible. (i'm over the coffee anger; don't worry. it only lasted a few minutes.)
i bought a wrist support, which makes trying tricks much more comfortable, at least physically. when i'm writhing around on the mats in a confusion of awkward spins and falls, it takes commitment to keep trying as a toothless old man stares from the vibrating plate machine. oh well. my body has felt good lately; my back feels better-supported, the weird binding/burning ligament on the top of my right foot has gone away, and my wrists and knees are holding up. it's all about the joints in this family.
as for next year, it looks like i'll be working in ichinomiya, aichi. it's only 10 minutes from nagoya, hallelujah! i have been so caught up in the details and complications of trying to end one job, plan a big move, find an apartment, start a new job, sell my car, and visit home, all in a foreign language, that i've lost sight a little bit of how exciting it will be to (for starters) live in a city that has a mexican food restaurant! has trains every few minutes instead of every few hours! is an hour from the airport! i am seriously timed out on this small town, and i'm proud of launching myself into the unknown in order to find more stimulation and inspiration. full speed ahead!

the secret life of knees

my knees have been working hard lately in my quest for breakdancing skills. i don't bruise easily, but even landing tricks on tatami has left every surface of my kneecap in various shades of purple.


i've begun lifting weights in earnest (i guess you could call it that); it's just no fun being too weak to catch myself as i hurl face-first toward the floor. my vocabulary and understanding of moves like windmills and flares has improved, but my poor "power" wrist is the weakest link. so many "power moves" require balancing all your weight on just one hand. my weedy wrists cry for mercy.
my body also seems confused as to whether it is fit or flabby; it's caught somewhere in between. some muscles are pulling in, some pushing out, some have yet to surface. it's a confused circus of fit-making. i just need a movie montage; that would make this process go a whole lot faster.

WTF, japan!

april 2: thanks to the elusive genius of the postal service, i sent off my american taxes two days ago...and then received them (stamps cancelled) in my own mailbox! certainly the japanese stamps and return address, along with the "airmail" sticker, were enough to indicate it should actually leave the country. the other weird part was the envelope wasn't stuck in my mail slot like usual or on the floor below it, it was about two feet from there on the big step up into my house...like it had been placed there. i can't even imagine how it got there; i hope desperately it was just a big gust of indoor wind, not some creepy (but clueless) postal worker.

also, the one time they ask me if i want bags at the grocery store (they seriously overbag here. my second complete japanese sentence was "i don't need a bag"), i have to say yes i need some because i didn't remember to bring any from home, and what does the guy do? he charges me 5 yen and doesn't give me bags. he gives me a stamp card for bringing my own bags, which i clearly don't have. invisible bags: not good for groceries! i took the basket out to my car and just plopped things one by one into the seat and drove off laughing nervously.
is april fool's a day later here? am i being punk'd?

well, whatever. i've been working out a lot (words i never ever thought i'd say), so i've been pretty relaxed. i am approaching a place i have never consciously been in my life: fitness. the muscles under my skin are beginning to feel taut, the sweating is making my skin smooth, and i'm getting some definition in my legs and abs. i mean, i actually have muscles under there? i keep wanting to touch them to ascertain they're really there. i'm totally going to turn into that guy who has his hand under his shirt all the time because he's feeling his pecs.

auto-updates, the scariest thing since killer bees

this morning i was prompted to update my computer software, something i've been avoiding for months. auto-updates are the kiss of death. the last two times i have allowed them to run their course, my computer fell into a coma and had to be woken up in "safe mode," which feels far from safe. they should call it "get ready to panic mode." both times i was able to eventually reach my computer's consciousness again, but after last year's hard drive failure, i'm rightfully paranoid. however, updates are important for security and performance reasons, so i finally hurried through a photo/music backup session and clicked Go To It.

*beep...swoosh*
no blue screen of death? no endless restart? i think that's a first.

nevertheless, i'm having an oddly anxious day. i'm hoping to get a job in this small english school near nagoya, and i have an appointment to meet them in a week and check out the housing options they have available. that's one odd thing about japan. rather than leaving you to your own devices, many jobs have their own housing, which can either be a really good thing or really, really not.
i love looking at apartments, and i was actually really excited to find a cute little place that's right for me, but it could be a lot cheaper to go with what they have, and my japanese isn't great, so there you go. the persistent problem.
i had a nice anxiety dream about it too, or i guess it was an anxiety dream. in my dream i was worried about it, just like i am IRL (that's "in real life" for you grown-ups), but when they showed me the apartment, i loved it. an anti-anxiety dream? but when i woke up, i didn't feel any of the "phew, it was only a dream" relief.
on the other hand, i have been obsessively daydreaming about what it would be like to live a mere ten minutes from a major city! i have been wrapping myself in the sweet nectar of shorter train times and cheaper fares like a mosquito in lip gloss. i'll be half an hour (and $10) from places it would have taken me 3 hours (and $70) to reach from here! my life will never be the same again. i mean, i might actually have one.

shake n' break

here's the freeze i nailed this morning and without looking all exhausted and sweaty, either! can't say the same for all my practices earlier in the week. i definitely need to work on my arm strength, as i have now realized that being a woman, and therefore having a lower center of gravity, makes the power moves a lot more challenging because it changes the balance. i'm determined, though!



very dramatic! i love this shot; i just couldn't make it into position before the self-timer went off.


a much harder freeze: no knees!

jelly arms and judo candy: my new career as a breaker

the last time i was excited about doing something athletic was about, ohhh, never. i did ballet and gymnastics as a kid, but i avoided "sports" like plague monkeys. i like being healthy, but i don't totally enjoy the process of staying that way. the only reason i started going to the gym was because i got an ipod. dancing has always made me happy, so i trick myself into "dancing" in a straight line on a machine. i go to the gym about twice a week, but it's a slacker workout--i drag myself in the door for twenty to forty minutes of running, some stretching, and i'm back out in an hour, glad to have it over with for a few more days. i do feel energetic and relaxed and all that crap, which is why i go. however, something has gone terribly wrong...
ever since Quest Crew set fire to the stage of America's Best Dance Crew, i'm actually antsy to get in the gym. i'm on fire too. i have been stupidly happy, studying their performances over and over, heart pounding. SO. DAMN. EXCITED! it's been disturbingly long since i felt this inspired. Quest has made the awe-inspiring art of breakdancing accessible. breaking has always seemed scary and exclusionary...ripped street dudes battling on the pavement, which is where it started. since i've never been street, it seemed untouchable. but the Quest guys are fun, silly, artistic, and incredibly good at breaking. and they're conceptual; artistically they speak my language. i knew they were going to be something special when i recognized Victor Kim and Hok from So You Think You Can Dance (other members were on season 3, which i haven't seen).

ok, time for you to see for yourself! click the HQ button so you can appreciate the speed and intricacy. week 1: the first taste! week 3: they had to "bring" britney spears and do part of the routine blindfolded. week 6: their choreography had to be inspired by the Chris Brown Forever video. week 7: they had to incorporate 5 specific hip-hop styles into the number. OrQuestra: as their final performance, they had to make their own song and create a dance that showed what their crew was all about.

so what does all this mean?
it means i have been getting all kinds of uncomfortable in pursuit of some street cred. 'till now i haven't been exactly stationary, but i haven't done a headstand or somersault (child's play, really) in a long time. my first attempt at a handstand made my blood, so used to chillin' in my lower extremities, rocket to my brain, and i felt heavier and stupider than a cartoon anvil. luckily it's all uphill from there.
last week i started practicing in earnest. i'm a baby on this road, so i decided to start with baby freezes. yeah, i know they look easy, but i don't have a lot of core strength, and at first i was bent over my arm like soggy cardboard. my wrists are crap too. a week later, though, i nailed it. my handstands have progressed to four controlled seconds, i can do armstands, and my air swipes are looking less like a scribble and more like an illustration.
this all comes at a price: i doubt most beginning breakdancers get pounding headaches every time they practice, but of course they probably aren't starting at 30 years old either...make that definitely aren't. you should start learning this before you worry about the consequences of falling on your face, breaking your back, or biting your tongue off. i also had a slight run-in with the bathroom doorknob, but amazingly i think my knee won the battle. i got a purple lump, but the doorknob had to be bent back into place.

yesterday i spent longer than usual at my tiny gym. the only other people who really hang there are two old guys and two grunty guys who wear circus pants and lift in the other room (they got nothin' on me), so i don't feel awkward trying out my weird new moves. after an hour of working the mats, i could feel their curiosity seeping through the door. one after another, they would walk in, do something for like 30 seconds and then go back. it made me happy in a way, because it felt like the beginning of a tentative camaraderie. finally one guy told me the other guy was sukebei (a perv), always a good ice breaker. i laughed and felt accepted into the outskirts of their muscle village; it was the first word any of them had ever spoken to me.
at last, you can see for yourself what i've been up to. by the end of the night, my arms were pulpy and quivering, my head throbbed, and i thought wistfully about judo candy (advil, coined by stan lim--thanks stan!). falling out of this position sounds like toppling bowling pins: that would be my limbs hitting the floor. i pulled the arch of my foot too, and realized i should have been wearing shoes, but here it is. i can do it with just one arm and a little bit of face.



today i feel like someone popped my barbie arms off and beat me with them.

the fine line between bread and pain

i'm still on a health high! every day that i wake up feeling good, i practically skip to school beaming. it's incredible how much energy even minor health problems require. i've been eating normally again for about five days and reeeeally enjoying food.
last night i had kimchi nabe for one. nabe is supposed to be a communal, party-type food, but those adorable tiny mushrooms were on sale (enokitake) and it snowballed. i don't have a portable burner like most people use to cook on the table at parties, so i just sat by my stove and shovelled (ok, chopstick-ed...chopstuck?) spicy goodness into my mouth. yes, i ate it all in one sitting. you put an assortment of veggies, tofu, and meat to bubble in a spicy broth and then fish out whatever you want when it's done. easy! it was the first time i had made it myself, and it was yummy!


ready to eat!


afterwards, you put rice in to soak up the broth and have it for lunch the next day.


i also made molten chocolate muffins, again. i had been craving them, but held off since my system wasn't amenable to solid foods last week. i couldn't even manage to give one away, they are so good! if you want the recipe, it's this one. i don't use the espresso or ice cream, you don't need it!
this culinary hedonism began last week. i had been slowly adding solid food back into my diet, with a few fits and starts, when i started craving taiyaki. taiyaki is sweet batter cooked in the shape of a fish, usually filled with something. occasionally there is a very friendly guy who sells it in the entrance of the grocery store. i walked to the store for some exercise, and lucky! the guy was there. i said "screw you" to my intestines, smiled sweetly at the vendor, and walked away with 17 mini taiyaki (what an odd number, 17! that was the minimum you could buy). i sat down on a park bench so that i wasn't eating and walking, prayed for smooth sailing, and started eating. i have been really concentrating on eating more slowly and chewing better, thanks mom, so that's what i did. no problems! magnificent happiness!


my favorite filling is cho~co~late.


the scene of the crime.


thanks to my very good mood, i had a good laugh at this student's test answer because it sounded all too familiar.


she meant "bread," since "pan" is bread in japanese, but the misspelling makes it genius!

my, what large eyes you have

i've been feeling really crappy the past week. not "i'm sick and need to rest" crappy, but "i wonder if i should go to the hospital" crappy. i won't tell you the gory details, but suffice it to say my digestive tract has been jacked. clem seems to be involved somehow, and i've been feeling a lot of discomfort. however, last night i had only chicken broth and a probiotic Yakult for dinner (despite serious cravings for a hamburger), and now i'm feeling a LOT better. i'm hopeful it will last. so on a health-high, i'm going to write some more.
i have a wide melodramatic streak which i have mostly overcome, but when i feel vulnerable, especially health-wise, it reasserts itself as my hypochondria shoots into overdrive. welcome to my life the past year. last night, as i prayed for my guts to get a grip, i started imagining simple things i wanted to experience again before i die. you know those old-fashioned knobbly bedspreads from like the 40s? i kept thinking, "i wish i could wrap myself up in one at some nice old lady's house." weird! i think it has more to do with wanting to be comforted and taken care of than anything, but it's still pretty random.
when i was around 15, we went on little family vacation to arizona. we decided to stay at a bed and breakfast. my memories of the whole experience are time-worn, but i do remember our hostess, june, had a pretty literal interpretation of "bed and breakfast." it wasn't private and luxurious, there was no separation from her own living space and ours, it was just a couple of rooms in her house. it was like intruding on someone else's grandma. i slept in her grown daughter's room with all of her stuff staring at me; it was incredibly awkward. mom and i had whispered exclamations of dismay and hilarity as we joked about june-bug. the next morning at breakfast, she had cut the only orange off her cornered orange tree. we would have gladly done without the sacrifice, as the orange was tart and thick-skinned. after breakfast we evacuated as soon as possible, grimacing comically to each other. anyway, i think she had one of those knobbly quilts on my bed. even though the experience was awkward, it's a good memory.
the other thing i thought of was wanting to smell wood chips again. talk about random!

so here's the real story; recently i endeavored to get some new contact lenses. this is always a long, emotionally painful process because my eyes are apparently incredibly difficult to please. then of course, i know none of the technical japanese, so i had to drag someone along with me every time i went. talk about trouble! the first and second pairs were way off. as is always the case, i could see the technicians' faces fall when they spotted me in the waiting room. as if i WANT to come back and bother them that many times. i suggested to the doctor (this is my experience with my own eyes speaking) that slightly larger lenses usually hold my strong prescription better. as this filtered through my translator, the response was "we'll have to customize them, since we japanese have smaller eyeballs." ha! i wasn't saying my eyes were bigger, i was saying the lens is stronger. it seemed a ludicrous statement, but he agreed to try, and the next pair was much closer. at long last, we arrived at pair that seemed decent enough, so me and my giant foreign eyeballs walked happily out the door.

2009: sexy and sugar-free

many of you wonder what happened to mr. sugar since i haven't mentioned him in a while. well, i'm not really the new year's resolution type, but i also like the idea of starting fresh, so as the new year dawned, i considered my relationship to him. i knew that i was putting way too much thought into every little interaction we had, which isn't the sign of a healthy balance. i admitted to myself that it didn't seem likely it would go anywhere, so why waste anymore time hoping for it? that's when i decided to earnestly let go of him; stop hoping for anything in the future, cut off the part of me reaching out for his attention.
i did pretty well. it's hard to change your knee-jerk reaction to someone right away, but after that split second every morning, i'd return to not thinking of him.
two weeks later, i looked up to see him standing next to me in the copy room. he made some small talk and then said, "i have news." they should call it "knews," because as soon as he said that, i knew exactly what it was. over winter break he got married. yet another secret-till-it's-a-done-deal japanese romance. that explained a LOT. the invisible elephant, apparently sitting on my head, and the awkwardness that has surrounded our interactions the past several months, evaporated. somewhat giddily, i yammered congratulations, and he seemed truly surprised. i wonder if he expected me to cry. far from it; finally i could relax. finally i knew where he was really coming from.
it still strikes me as odd that not six months ago, he was telling me that everyone was pressuring him to find someone and get married, but he didn't want to...little did i know he was probably already staring down the long barrel of that gun. in japan, if you're past thirty and single, you may as well have a big, fat expiration date on your face. i guess the clock is ticking since i just turned 30!
;)

my first daikon

so my neighbor, aiko-san, the old lady who always tries to talk to me in a thickly dialectal japanese, offered me a daikon radish my first year, but i told her i didn't really know how to use it. by "told her," i mean i shrugged and looked helpless. however, since we've gotten to know each other better and since i've done more japanese cooking recently, when she offered me one from her garden this year, i accepted. she also threw in some fresh spinach. i looked up some ways to use daikon and decided on a miso soup, since that's easy. i even made real kombu seaweed broth, from scratch! most people here don't do that anymore, but it's not hard and gives the soup a more complex flavor and higher nutrient content. i threw a few yuzu (citrus) peels in the broth too, and it was the most delicious miso soup i've ever made!




i stewed the rest of the daikon and crushed some sesame seeds into a salty miso sauce, and ta-da! i polished off my first daikon in one sitting.


here's me goofing off in circle K, blowing the steam from my tiny matcha latte.

osechi in pink pants

let's get to it! lots of stuff to tell you. i'll start with the new year and weave crazily through time from there. lots of pictures too; prepare yourself.
this was my first christmas/new year in japan, even though i've lived here for 2 1/2 years; it was my first christmas away from home ever (more on that later). i wanted to experience something authentic or traditional from the japanese new year holiday, like making mochi or whatever, but i didn't have any takers right away. i at least wanted to eat some of the foods (like the mysterious osechi i heard people talk about). i got in the spirit of things by buying some of the fancy sweets that come out for the new year. they didn't really taste as good as they looked.


ok, this one was the prettiest and had the best texture.


something that tasted wonderful, though, was my latest obsession--ichigo daifuku! marina tried to get me excited about these when she lived here, but i just wasn't there yet. my slowly changing tastes have finally found their way back to this winter sweet. inside soft pink mochi and bean paste is a fresh strawberry. they're a little difficult to find, so when i did happen to come upon them, i bought as many as i could conceivably eat in a day (they expire very quickly). YUMMMY.














my tastes have really changed a lot since i came here. i'm actually proud of that. it's fun to get used to, and even begin to like things that used to be weird to you. a barely-poached egg (floating in liquid like an amputated eye), all yellow and runny and swirled into rice for breakfast used to be barf-o-rific. this year i started craving it; i couldn't get enough! i stopped barely tolerating bean paste and started liking it. i look forward to pickled vegetables with my meal. i relish the tart saltiness of umeboshi. my feelings about fish have changed a lot too; i used to only like sushi or a cooked fillet. but now...fish for breakfast? pickled fish with the skin on? whole tiny fish with sesame seeds? all fine with me.
anyway, cat and tomohiro came to my house for a little new year's party, and we played Uno (surprisingly hard to follow after all this time, even sober!), watched a movie, and at 11:30, hiked up the mountain behind my house in the dark (not one of my better ideas) to see the midnight fireworks from the top. i've been up that path several times in the daylight, and it's not very difficult, but between the two measly flashlights and tomohiro's odd city-boy lurching on the trail, it was more dangerous than i expected. it didn't help that we couldn't see how steep the trail was around us...or in front, or behind. we slid in leaves and stumbled over boulders and finally found our way to the rock that overlooks the city. in the darkness it looked a million times smaller and more precarious than in daylight. plus, i had just recalled the stories of wild boars in that area (was it a tall tale?). the idea of being cornered on a cliff by a massive wild boar terrified me. it would be all my fault, too. great.
after the brief fireworks, i begged the other two to go straight down, and we did. i didn't relax until we finally reached the safety of the road. 2009, ushered in by the fear of being gored or plunging to my death.

our "wild" night.


new year's day i got my wish. my friend wakana offered to make me lunch at her family home, and what was it? osechi! it turns out to be a collection of traditional foods (which vary by family) made or bought during the new year that you can kinda eat at any time without much preparation. that frees the womenfolk to relax too (supposedly). wakana's family's osechi looked like this:


the soup is ozoni, a soy-sauce broth with meat or veggies and mochi in it. there were also sweet black beans, jammy orange chestnuts, pickled sushi, fish cakes, fish eggs, and vegetables with lotus root. i liked everything but the fish eggs. her sweet grandmother beamed at me from her hospital bed in the living room. when i first arrived, i thought, "oh crap, am i disturbing her?" i remember my own grandmother when she got to the point where she was in hospital bed. she was often confused and distracted, but this tiny old woman was sharp! she gently got herself up and pulled out a photo album of wakana's baby pictures for me to see. she had taken all of them, and they were large, color prints that captured the parallel time of my own childhood in another country. the family's love was palpable in the pictures. it was surprisingly touching to see it. the only odd part was the occasional naked baby picture...which turned into the occasional naked middle-school picture as the album progressed. i don't really have a problem with tasteful? appropriate? nudity in art or life, but it was weird to have someone watching me look at nude pictures of my friend who was in the other room. what was i supposed to say? still, i was impressed by the collection and the fact that i had a chance to meet her sweet granny.

i went for a solitary walk on the 2nd. it was chilly, grey, and blanketed in that inpenetrable stillness that falls over towns during holidays when everyone is wrapped up inside. it was lonely, but in a good way; it was nice to be out in the freshness. most people put up sprigs of cleyera on their homes and businesses like we do evergreen wreaths, but i chuckled when i saw this one was put up with tape. i used to tape Everything, and my mom used to tease me about it. see mom! i'm not the only one!


the next stop was my favorite teacher and dear friend naoko's family home in tsu. i drove as the sun set and snapped pictures out the window.


a mikan (mandarin orange) grove above a bridge. mie is chock full of them. we are swimming in mikan. sometimes they terrace them over train tunnels. there is just No More Room for another orange tree.



hilarious. not a lot of competition to post signs here...on this abandoned shack.



finally i got to meet naoko's parents, who are both as sweet and wonderful as naoko herself! they said i was their "other daughter" and that it felt comfortable to have me there. i felt the same!
they made me osechi meal #2!
a lot of the same things here: in the middle; black sweet beans and a different kind of chestnut, then fish cakes, fish, veggies with lotus and shiitake, and fish eggs.


a side plate of sea cucumber (nice taste, weird texture) and pickled radish with a golden dish of sake.


a slightly less traditional dish; sausage and cabbage, and chawanmushi, which i helped make.


finally, homemade mochi toasted and wrapped in nori.


i shared artichoke hearts with them, so they could try something i love.


naoko's dad.


our family picture of sorts.


naoko's mom even gave me otoshidama, a gift of money (given to kids up through high school age) in a little envelope! i was really lucky and got just what i wanted for the new year: an experience of the traditional new year holiday with a wonderful family.

i have this under control?

as most of you know, i teach all of my classes with partner teachers who speak both english and japanese. i am the "native speaker." most of the time i trade off with the other teacher during the class, sometimes bearing most of the responsibility for the lesson, but i have never started class without the other teacher present. last week, however, one of the teachers i work with was occupied by some crisis when our class was supposed to begin. he waved me towards the door and told me to go ahead to class. i thought he would just be absent for a minute or two, but when he didn't come, i figured i should start class. silence fell over the room as i faced them, and i said the word i had heard hundreds of times, hajimemashou? "Let's begin." The question in my voice broke the tension, and everyone laughed. They rose, we bowed, and I started class alone for the first time. It felt good!

autumn, and i wanted to return to this wonderful place in kyoto i realized i never wrote about. during my first year, thanks to the magnificent sam and fiona, we saw the cherry blossoms in kyoto and stayed in a traditional merchant house, called machiya. it's one of the coolest places i've ever stayed. the mansion is mazelike and has many cool surprises, usually discovered when crawling around, feeling every corner in search of each room's three or four well-hidden light switches (one will be in a cabinet, one on the ceiling, and one outside the room). there are at least fourteen rooms, too, so turning off the 40 lights is practically a full-time job.
i assembled twelve friends and we gathered at the machiya for a november weekend. brian and i had to take off work early friday (since we live the farthest away) in order to check in on time. in celebration, we bought some beers and had a lovely afternoon drinking and knitting on the train!



when we arrived, a young man who spoke english met us there in order to go over the rules (and where to find the light switches!). when he mentioned he had lived in the US, i asked where and was surprised to hear it was seattle. i told him i had lived just south, in tacoma. he was like, "actually. tacoma is where i lived too." the coincidences got weirder. we both studied painting in tacoma at the same time! we both lived downtown. finally i said, "i lived near the Grand Cinema," and he said, "so you must have known the Kickstand Cafe?" of course i did. suddenly, the six years since folded up like an accordion, and the memory of his face surfaced. i had met him before, just once, in that cafe in tacoma!! he had even given me a japanese fashion magazine, which i still have!
whoa.

one by one, people arrived on buses and trains, and we took a "family picture" in the dining room.


we scattered through the house, exploring. each room is beautiful, and several of the rooms surround inner gardens open to the sky, separated by only paper shoji doors. the bathrooms each have a cedarwood bathtub, the absolute best material a bath could be made of. the wood is never cold like ceramic or steel, so you settle in with no shock of cold against your skin. it's marvelous. (a picture of that coming soon)
we made futon angels, and then talked late into the night.