Sleeping Jellyfish

I found a few pictures from a really nice day on campus I took about a month ago. Here they are. Our school is kind of out of the way from the city, but there are a couple small towns nearby, a giant sports complex, a big hotel, a shopping center and some preserved nature areas. I really like it actually, though some of the other students are having a hard time adjusting. I think moving from Milwaukee to Winona helped me transition into small town living better, and really nurtured my appreciation for simple things and the beauty of untouched nature. There is a magnificent forest just five minutes on foot East of campus and a nice river about thirty minutes on foot North. I hear a lot of “there’s nothing to do here” from other students. I think they are not using their imaginations enough.

There are three flags flying in front of the Administration Building. The first two should be obvious, the Akita International University flag and the flag of Japan. The third one, the brown/maroon colored one I don’t actually know what it is, but I think it might be for Akita Prefecture. I will ask.

A nice shaded area next to the two lecture halls, B and C, the trees are Akita Cedar trees which are quite famous I’ve been told, at least in Japan, and were much sought after in older times just as they are now. They also smell quite nice on warm days.

This is the same area but from farther back and a wider angle. Lecture Hall C is on your right, with Lecture Hall B straight ahead and the Student Center and Café through the trees on the left. Even among all the remodeling and construction going on it is quite beautiful around here.

Speaking of beauty, I was able to go on a bus trip with a class that I’m not taking because a few students didn’t show up. I have a post started devoted to it, but need just a bit more, so here are some wonderful pictures of the East Sea near this rest stop/shrine area. I will put them up as smaller pictures as there is not much to describe, but I hope you take the time to open up each one of them. When people think of Japan, they often think of sushi, samurai, and Tokyo, but I have to stress that those are such a small part of this wonderful archipelago of volcanic rock that is so lush in natural beauty, traditions, and culture. Wow, that sounded like a line from a tourist guide book. Picture time!

I hope this will inspire anyone and everyone to take the chance to travel. Though this might look similar to any coastal area about the same latitude it is definitely Japan. There are so many surprises everywhere: hidden shrines, gigantic vegetables, forests that are hundreds of years old and have never been disturbed, castle ruins, ancient battle grounds, samurai villages with the same roads, food that has been made the same way for hundreds of years, and on and on. Maybe I’m a bit starved for culture because as a native born American, I can’t trace my peoples’ history back more than a few hundred years, and even less for most of my ancestors. I find a living history that goes back thousands of years to be very fascinating.

Question: If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?

Many of you may not know, but I think I at least told my mom. I lost my glasses, my spiffy new Swedish framed glasses that I got early this summer, on about the second week here in Japan. I was devastated. I would not stop complaining and moping about it for weeks. I was a wreck.

But guess what?

I found them! I had even looked myself several times all over campus, even by the sports complex but just could not find them. And today when I went to switch my laundry, I saw them sitting on the window sill, pretty weather stained, but they cleaned up excellently. So I have them back. Woo-Hoo!

In honor of finding my glasses I will post a random picture of my host brother. Well, it might be my host nephew. I’m not sure. My Akita Family, the Ichimura’s, are a bit older. Hideo is getting some white hairs and his darling wife Kieko also seems to be past the “I just had a child” kind of area of their lives. Also I heard him call them BaBa and JiJi, which is short for grandma and grandpa respectively, so he is either being a mean and rude child, or being a sweet, endearing grandchild. But, nonetheless, here is the kid that is always around. His name is Takuto. He is super cool but he makes me miss Kailee a lot.

What a cutie. And that peach, Kieko says, is one that grows in Southern Japan and are supposed to be the biggest peaches in the world, and I might just agree. Even the apples here are absolutely gigantic. Grapes too. When people joke about everything in Japan being small they over look the fruits and vegetables. On the subject of food…

…I know this is kind of lame, but I miss sandwiches from the Winona Sandwich Co. If you’re in the area, please have one in honor of me. If Brian Sanders is working, he might not make you pay if you mention my name.

I apologize for my tardiness but we had a round of quizzes and tests these last two weeks and then our phenomenal AIU Festival this past weekend, which I will discuss later, but for now, I am going to try to get in a few short posts over the weekend to catch up for some lost time. I feel that maybe if I keep the posts shorter people will be more inclined to check regularly and maybe to leave comments too. I like to be efficient and economical when it makes sense to. So, for today I will briefly show you how to make coffee in my room.

Step 1) Fill kettle with water.

This is my kettle. It is extremely useful for most types of cooking. Boiling water for coffee or tea, making noodles right inside of it, boiling an egg or two, anything really. Our Heatec hot plate uses IH style heating, which is more energy efficient (and seems to heat up faster) than conventional stove tops, but the drawback is you must use the specific IH pots, pans, and kettles. No ceramic or glass either.

Step 2) Heat water.

As you can see the directions are of course in Japanese and the temperature in Celsius but no problem with the help of our two best friends: a good dictionary and trial and error. The button I’m pressing turns it on, then the pink framed button just a bit to the left turns the actual heating mechanism on. Adjust temperature as needed, again mostly guessing. C= 9/6 + 32F, right?

Step 3-5) Get dripper from shelf, put on top of preferred mug, take filter from shelf and insert into dripper.

I hope this photo set accurately portrays the next few steps. The dripper I got for a dollar from The Daiso, its kind of like the Dollar Tree or something of that sort. They have ceramic ones too at tea shops and other stores which I might invest in because I’m always concerned about hot water leeching chemicals from plastics. But in all other manners, I think this is pretty creative. I’ve made drip coffee with some pretty creative tools while camping but this system works so well, I don’t know if I can go back to the machine. Speaking of I did look at, but I didn’t feel right dropping 40-50$ US on a coffee maker I would use for a year, and yeah I could probably sell after the year, but whatever. This cost me a few dollars and it works great.

Step 6-8) Grab coffee from shelf and deposit into filter, amount depending on preferred taste. Pour hot water from kettle into filter, and enjoy the beautiful sound of the luscious liquid chocolate drip drip dripping into the cup. Usually repeat steps 7 and 8 for a full cup.

Theres this import store in the mall where you can get cheese, salsa, Spam, European wine, Cambell’s soups, and various teas and coffee. Me and Michal also found this great tea shop/ coffee shop the last time we were in Akita City, where the owners sat and talked to us and had us sample some of their favorite teas. Just wonderful cheery people who were very happy that we were interested in learning about their language and culture and were of course very curious about us as well. My friend Dan who spent most of the summer in India complained about the lack of dark coffee, and I will agree, in most restaurants, bars, and teashops, its a bit uncommon. There are quite a few Tully’s and Starbucks in the bigger cities but we all know that is not real coffee. I feel bad for Dan and am very thankful to stumble upon fresh ground coffee in a few shops like the one I described.

Step 9) ENJOY!

I try to stick to only one or two cups a day, and I think now that it is getting pretty cold, I should buy some cocoa to help subside the urge to just make another cup of delicious hot coffee. I also have some tea put haven’t gotten any bags or a pot, just the herbs, so soon I will investigate some of those nifty tea pots they have at the tea shop.

Hope this finds everyone well and ready for the beautiful Autumn! I’d love to hear any great coffee stories or what your preferred method of coffee making is! French press? Italian? Instant? Let me know!

The are many fantastic perks to being an International Student at AIU. One of these is that the school offers many field trips and culture trips to see the local sights and take in the local flavor. Last week we had a trip into Akita City where we made 4 stops. First, we went to Senshu Park, a beautiful walking park that escalates up a series of gardens and stairways, up to Kubota Castle, the family compound of the Satake Family. The Castle was set high atop a hill with several gates along the way as to not need a normal wall close to the Castle to protect it. The park was beautiful with a lot of crafty waterways and sculptures.

This is the front gate to Kubota Castle, the castle that once stood in Akita. If I was an invading army, even if I had well strategized battle plans, I could easily get lost in the labyrinth that leads up to the castle.

A waterfall, a great example of the once natural waterworks that were on display. Lots of peaceful alcoves and pools where the streams would congregate…

…such as this. Some of the areas had recent embellishments such as the small fountain in the center of this picture. There always seems to be tension between the old and new in Japan, between preserving the old culture and embracing the last 150 years of modernization.

Here is the front gate, but on the way out. You can see a cross section of a tree on the left. Akita is famous for their Cedar trees and on warm days you can smell it. It very interesting.

This is Kubota Castle’s Osumiyagura Turret which served as both a lookout and weapons depot. It was very difficult to capture the whole Turret in one picture, but I hope this angle give a good perspective into how tall it was. And this wasn’t even the actual castle! Again, it was originally built without nails, using the Buddhist architecture brought over through Korea from China and India. Just alternating slats of wood with proper support. My Norwegian friend Magnus tells me its very similar to ancient Scandinavian building methods. Hmmm….

Here is a sculpture of Satake Yoshitaka, whose family ruled Akita for many generations. The family name, Satake, appears on street signs, monuments and many of the museum names.

Here is the Akita City skyline as seen from one of the lookouts in the Senshu Park. Notice the 711 off to the right. Again, 711 is the most convenient convenience store ever. EVER.

Next, we took a short walk to the Hirano Masakichi Museum of Fine Art. It was a smaller building but it housed many excellent works. It showcased many masterpieces including painter Tsugouharu Foujita’s “Events of Akita” which is one of the world’s largest oil canvas paintings in the world. We were not allowed to take pictures but I hope to go back there to see the exhibit again, as we only had a limited amount of time to spend there. There was a great series of etchings by Goya, and also a few minor paintings by Rembrandt, Picasso, and Van Gogh.

After the Museum we got back on the bus and headed to the Akita Market. It’s like an indoor farmer’s market kind of like the ones in the Northeast and Northwestern US. I’ve been to Pike’s Place Market in Seattle though not on the busiest days, so I didn’t really get to see the flying fish, but I think we were at the Akita Market on a pretty slow day too, a Tuesday. But, anyways, lots of vendors selling anything you can imagine. Radishes the size of your arm, apples the size of softballs, grapes the size of golf balls, and some of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet. The always give you a sample before you buy it, like when I asked for two apples, she gave me a slice and then gave all my friends slices, maybe its just good salesmanship, but I took it as kindness.

Fish! They have a restaurant in the vicinity where you can take what you just bought and they will cook it for you. If it is still alive they will fix that and then prepare it however you order it. We didn’t have time, but it sounds really cool.

More Fish! I tried to get a couple guys to go in on a whole fish with me, but we had no way to keep it cold till after the basketball game.

Melons, potatoes, kiwis, squash, almost anything that grows in the ground or above it, you can find it here. The apple I had was soooooooooo good.

Friends become guides and translators when they join us on our outings. The Akita accent is very deep and a bit hard for us to understand, even the native Japanese from the South think its kind of cute or funny. I’ve picked up a few of the local dialect colloquialisms though, and its kind of cool.

After the Market we finished off our day with a Japanese Basketball League game. Definitely not the NBA, it was still fun to watch, and especially to see how excited the fans got. The Japanese are in general pretty quiet and reserved, so it was neat to see them get rowdy. As gaijin we would just pick one of the teams and cheer for them. There was the visiting Sendai Tigers vs. the local Niigata Albirex. Did you know that an Albirex is a kind of bird? I didn’t until I went to the basketball game.

The game started off with a pregame performance. There was a drummer and flute player and they played some wild traditional music with a modern flair to it.

A bit blurry, but this is how the game was. We had pretty good seats, just behind one of the baskets. The teams were mostly Japanese with some Americans on each team.

This is for my sister, Kailee. During halftime they had a small dance troupe of little girls dancing with the older cheerleaders. There was also this weird tree mascot which I still don’t really understand. Maybe its the Akita Cedar?

And what Japanese Culture Excursion would be complete without some Engrish. For those of you who are unfamiliar with “Engrish” it is the term used to describe English being used poorly or translated improperly onto T-shirts, billboards, signs, etc. This usually comes up in Asia quite often. And it is called Engrish because it is difficult for many Asians to pronounce ‘L’ sounds especially when they are first learning. Japanese doesn’t have an ‘L’ consonant, so when transcribing it is often pronounced as an ‘R’, thus giving us Engrish. Visit here for more details.

So the sign says “We’re Always” and thats it. There’s not another one next to it. Just “We’re Always”. “We’re Always What?” you might ask. Nobody knows. People think that Asian cultures are so wise because they speak in metaphors and riddles but sometimes I think its just poor grammar or translation.

It was a great trip, had tons of fun, got to meet some great locals, and eat the largest apple I’ve ever seen in my life. Dad asked me to put up a few pictures of my accommodations and I’ve been meaning to for the last two weeks but just haven’t gotten around to it. I just took a series of photos of how I make coffee here because it is so amazing, I have to share. So. It should be up soon. Midterms are coming up, so I’m glad I got the coffee making down to a science now, before the textbooks hit the fan. Cheers!