Now we’re back to reality. For me that’s no job, no car, no home, no money or better yet, negative money. We didn’t get paid for the last 6 weeks of working with Nova and if we do ever get that money it’ll be a very long time. But all that said; I’m really excited to be home with all my friends and family again. Each time I go away for a long time, I really realize how much I have and I become more appreciative of it all.

I have a LOT of photos to post and I’ll get around to them soon. I promise, but just in little bits and pieces. I ended up leaving my school branch a bit more abruptly and felt really bad about it, but given the circumstances for my leaving I couldn’t really have a farewell lesson with students and sit there and say, “Well the company is going down the drains and I don’t feel I have any other choice”. I left my email address with a few of the teachers that were sticking it out and told them to pass it on. So a few students got their hands on it and said they wanted to say goodbye. One of the students (thank you Hiroko) invited everyone to come to her house to say goodbye. It was a great party!!! I’m so glad I was able to say good bye to many of you. Thanks to all who were at the party and all the great gifts you gave me. I really appreciate your kindness! I will miss Kohei, Yui, Nami, Yuu, Kazuki, Tsumugi, Tsubasa, to name a few students that I didn’t get to say goodbye to. I wish them well and hope they continue to learn and practice English.

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in Waikiki while I type this. Many people back home know we’re on our way, but my sister is one who doesn’t know! Everyone else in my family knows, but I wanted to surprise her. She is one of the people who I think missed me most while I was gone. It’s her senior year in high school and she wanted me to be around for the big events: graduation, prom, etc. I was really sad to be missing them BUT turns out I won’t! I can’t wait to surprise her. We’ve got it worked out so we’ll surprise her at work and her boss will let her leave early so we can go out to dinner. Maybe she does know though and is just really good at playing dumb. My mom confessed the just the other day when they were in the kitchen (Nick and her) and Liz was half asleep on the couch just in the next room, she says, “Well Sam will be home in…. (Nick looks at my mom with an expression that could kill) ….6 months” And Nick tried to cover it even more by saying “Geez mom, you’re really weird in the morning sometimes.” Either way, surprise or no surprise, I think she’ll be happy to see me:-)

I’ll post more pictures of our trips soon. For those of you who are hearing that I’m back in MN for the first time, sorry:-) I’ll see you soon!

One of my “Must Do’s” In Japan was climb Mount Fuji. the tallest mountain in Japan standing at 3776 Meters. Back in August, one of my fellow instructors at my branch did the organized tour through NTB – Nova Travel Bureau. After he did it, and said it was awesome, it started to occur to me that the official season for climbing was soon over. I thought to myself, if we didn’t do it now, we may never get to do it since we probably wouldn’t be here by the climbing season next year (July-August).

It wasn’t the easiest decision for us to make. Neither of us had climbed a mountain before. I will always remember Chris’ comment on this whole thing. It went something like this “Where did this all come from. We’ve been together 2 years. Not once have you mentioned wanting to climb mountains. Then all of the sudden we come to Japan and Bam!, you want to climb the tallest mountain in the country. I just don’t get it.” I thought it was pretty funny. In my defense, I told him I’ve always wanted to do something like this, I’d just never really had anyone to do it with me and now I had him:-) The morning I called to make the reservation, I basically sat there and thought about it for like 2.5 hours and continuously asked Chris if he thought we could do it. Finally, I called, transferred the money and we were all set. The next morning, as we’re sitting on the train, Chris says to me “I don’t know about this, maybe we can’t handle it.” I’m pretty sure I totally freaked out on him, but the money was already gone and we would have lost a big chunk to cancel so we were “stuck”.

I started going to the Gym in the mornings before work and went on the elliptical machine to help build up some stamina and muscle. My exercising had been pretty minimal with the exception of the hike to and from the train station in the morning, which does involve a couple hills and a long set of stairs:-)

I wanted us to be as prepared as we could be. Trail mix for snacking, snickers, lots of water. We had to buy backpacks because neither of us thought to bring them from home. We bought headlights for hiking overnight so we could see where we were walking (a pricey purchase, but well worth it).

When the weekend finally came our schedule was like this. (of course we stayed up until probably 2 am getting ready, packing, etc.)

Thursday 13th
5:30am – Wake Up
6:00am – Get on the train to Osaka
7:20am – Meet Tour Group at bus Station
7:30am – Leave for Fuji (We almost missed the bus because we got lost and kept asking for directions and getting the wrong ones so had to run with heavy backpacks to make it. We were the only non-Japanese people on our tour of about 30. This was only the beginning of our being late for the bus. At almost every rest stop we ended being the last ones on the bus.)
3:30pm – Arrive at Fuji 5th Station – change into gear and eat a light dinner.
5:00pm – Start Hiking
9:00pm – Stop at 7th Station Hut for 1.5 hour nap
11:30pm – Start climbing again.

Friday 14th
4:30am – Reach the top to see the sunrise.
5:30am – Start the decent
9:45-10:00am – Reach 5th Station – collapse with exhaustion:-)
10:15am – Leave for Hot Springs resort (not real hot springs)
11:00-1:00pm – Hot Springs – shower, bath, lunch
1:00pm – bus ride back to Osaka
8:00pm – Osaka
9:00pm – Home (apt. in Kobe)

Sat. Morning – go to work for a full 8 hour day.

In total, actual hiking time I think was about 15-17 hours. WOW!!! and we did it!!

This was a big topic of discussion for my voice lessons. Everyone asked if it was hard. Yes, it was obviously difficult. Part of me though felt at the end that it wasn’t as bad as I was imagining it would be. Also, I didn’t think I’d make it. But a big fact is that even if you didn’t make it all the way to the top, whatever distance you hiked up, you had to turn around and hike back, so really it’s not worth it to give up. When we were going up – I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. When ever we had to stop because the line of people got a little backed up it was actually harder on me than if we’d just continue to walk at a slow pace. It stopped my momentum. There were a few times times when even though the group kept going, I had to stop and catch my breath, but we were always either toward the front or in the middle so we never got behind. Instead of stopping at the designated rest areas with benches, our guide would stop us in the middle of the trail whenever he felt like smoking a cigarette. And, yes at every rest, he’d smoke. It seemed like that’s how he timed our break. I’d say we hiked for about 15 minutes and then rested for about 2-3. Although sometimes it felt like we were walking forever. It was cold way up in the mountains but we worked up a sweat hiking so it was frustrating when we had to stop and shiver in our cold sweat.

We reached the peak just as the sun began to rise. Everyone was in awe. Some of the Japanese people were praying. We were only at the top for about 30 minutes and then started the decent. For me, this was almost more difficult than the climb up. The path was less steep and wider but the gravel was slippery so I was walking really slowly. Even though it wasn’t very steep it was a killer on my knees. I think I’ve actually caused some permanent damage to them, nothing really serious, but even now when I am climbing stairs, sometimes they hurt.

We were pretty much exhausted for the next few days but both of us feel it was an amazing experience and well worth it. Something we’ll always remember.

Here are some pics below. Hope you enjoy!

5th Station – our starting point.

Ready to go!

Our Guide

And We’re Off!

Beginning of the Trail

Sunset ocean of clouds

Looking up the path

At sunset with our rosie cheeks from Hiking

Our group starting up again after taking our short nap

First glance at sunrise

Top of Mt Fuji

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything really about our time in Japan. For the most part we’ve been enjoying our time here.

Annie’s last few days of visiting us were a lot of fun. We went to a Kobe Steak Restaurant for the first time. For those of you who don’t know, Kobe is pretty famous for having some of the best steak in the world. The steak is the most marbled kind I’ve ever seen. The cows are massaged all day long, are fed beer, are held up by belts so they don’t really have to walk on all of their own weight, and basically treated like Kings. And that’s how they come out as super high quality steaks. Chris really wanted to go on a tour to see the cows. Supposedly they used to do it, but not anymore. Believe it or not, our students have told us that the farmers don’t want to reveal their secrets or traumatize their cows with visitors. Here are a few photos of the restaurant. Ahh and by the way, this is one of those things that are NOT cheaper in their original city…

Look at the slab of steak in the background

Yummy salad – Oishii!

Our personal chef

What we ate with the Steak – delicious veggies of different sorts

Lime Sorbet – Oishii des!

The 3 of us happy as can be after our meal!

After the restaurant we decided to take a cable car up to one of mountains. On this particular mountain there is an Herb Park called Nunobiki Park. It was a beautiful day and a great way to walk off our super rich food that’d we’d just eaten. The air was fresh, a little cooler than at the bottom of the mountain, and we could smell the herbs as we walked along the path. I snapped a few fun photos. I got a little carried away I think:-)

Kobe Skyline

Annie and Chris in the Cable Car

The Atrium

Inside the Nunobiki Herb Atrium

Cicada Shell – Sort of like a snakes skin I guess – I really don’t know

Chris eating some bananas or whatever is hanging from the banana bunch – mmm yummy!

On Annie’s last night here, we had enjoyed the Kobe Steak so much, that Chris decided to cook it himself and it was even better!

Our next adventure was a Hanshin Tigers Baseball Game. It was awesome! It was one of the things on our list of must see or do in Japan. We heard that it was quite a different experience than a baseball game back home. And it truly was. The atmosphere was more like a college football game. Even the other team had a cheering section with a band. The fans were all constantly singing and clapping or hitting small bats together to make nonstop noise. Instead of the 7th inning stretch, the fans blew up giant phallic shaped balloons and let them go simultaneously. They also did it after the game was over, because the Tigers had one and they stuck around to sing the teams theme song. We got really good seats for about $35 each. The bleachers were packed. Our Australian neighbor had a couple jerseys that he lent to us so we could fit in a little more (of course no matter what we do, we stand out) We were too big to fit in the tiny Japanese seats and had to stick our legs over the other seats into the next row. Eventually we realized that we were sitting in the wrong seats which should have been obvious since we knew our seats were close to third base, but we had been sitting by first. So we walked over towards the area we were supposed to be and Chris told me to follow him and we snuck in and got some great seats right behind home plate.

Us all Geared up

Big Huge Flags

Drinking was allowed – don’t worry, but just no bottles – you had to have all beverages in plastic cups (ahhh and we were allowed to bring in our own liquor – how sweet is that?)

Edameme Beans at a Baseball Game??? – I asked students – they say they go really well with beer but laughed when I said that’s not what you’d see in the US

Devoted fans! Cute little old lady in a jersey – i just had to take a pic.

Japanese just love being in pictures

So that’s it for adventures. On the more normal day to day side of being here, things are okay. Chris and I are now the Kid’s Coordinators for our Branches. We’re learning how to teach special TOEIC AND TOEFL lessons which makes the days a little more interesting. A few weekends ago, we had a little BBQ at our house with all the Gaijin in our neighborhood. Nova has been bringing in a bunch of new teachers, so we went from 5 people to now 10 people in our little area. It was a lot of fun. We’re going to have another one tomorrow. We made friends with a little stray kitten who was super daring and came right up to us searching for food. We named it Squeaky because it squeaks when it meows. It’s super cute.

We’ve discovered that Salmon is pre-salted most of the time to help preserve it longer (kind of ruins the flavor in our opinion) Also Hard boiled eggs can be bought already boiled and they are also already salty. Strange things:-) Chris has perfected his Thai food skills, so we eat deliciously at home. I continue to feel spoiled with his expert cooking. Everytime I talk about how he does all the cooking to my students they EHHHH!! in jealousy.

Next entry will be all about our Mount Fuji trip!!!

Places I’ve visited

Here’s the Map, but you can’t see details of all the places.

Anyway, after doing this, I realized I really need to get to some different countries in different continents! But still it’s pretty need to get a map of all the places you’ve been. I’m sure that I’m missing a few.

Anyway, we wasted no time. The next day we left for Kyoto to go visit a different city. The last time Annie (Chris’ mom) was in Japan, she went to Kyoto and really enjoyed it. I think it was a different time of year, because this weather is miserable for sight seeing. So hot. I think some of the days we were out, it reached above 100F and the humidity was pretty high too. So we stayed in a cute little Ryokan (Japanese style hotel). They had a nice room for 3 people so we took it. Of course, we slept on Futons. A few little touches that I thought were really cute include: them showing us around the hotel – where the bathrooms were – Japanese style and Western style, details on the shower/bathing, and they brought up some Japanese tea and little cakes that basically tasted like twinkies. The owner of this Ryokan has been in business for about 30 years and has guest books that she keeps and asks all visitors to write in it. I think she was on the 115th book. Crazy huh?

Here are a few pictures of the Ryokan. I wish I had taken a picture of the outside. It was on a very small street right next to a little stream. Of course, like most businesses, they had the Tunuki statue and the Lucky Cat statues. Chris and I bought a Lucky Cat, but we’re still on the hunt for a Tanuki. Here is the wikipedia definition of a Tanuki. “Tanuki (raccoon dog) statue, as commonly seen in Japan as a good luck totem. Tanuki wears a straw hat, carries a flask of nihonshu (sake) and a fishing pole, and has outsize testicles.”

So we see them all over the place. I found on the web this huge one that someone took a picture next to. I wish I knew where it was. (I blacked out the persons face because I don’t know who it is and don’t want to get in trouble) Chris and I really want to get a Tanuki Family statue. They’re just so cute. We’d like to have some souvenirs of items/things that Japanese people have or use often. And since we’ve seen these Tanuki EVERYWHERE, it’s perfect I’m really not sure where we’ll put them in our home when we get back to the US. We’ll figure it out.

We arrived in Kyoto in the early afternoon. So we went and did some sight seeing after dropping off our luggage at the Ryokan. We walked from the Ryokan to a street filled with outside vendors of pottery. Then looking at the map we continued a little further North (on the eastern side of Kyoto) to a few shrines.

Old Tree held up by supports

We went into this park – Muryama Park. We walked by a nice little pond area. There was a Japanese couple that was looking very closely at something at the edge of the water. When they left, we walked over to find several turtles peeking out of the water from time to time. Here is a picture of our little turtle friend popping up to say hello.

There was a huge Shrine there (there’s a picture of the entrance with a very tiny Chris and Mom standing in front of it). Unfortunately, there was a sign that said “The time is over” Engrish for, it’s closed. So funny some of the signs we see written in English.

Chion in

We met an actor in a Samurai costume who was taking some publicity photos at the park. Chris was lucky enough to get a picture with him. Check it out.

So this was all on the first day. That night we went to an okay restaurant that was in a department store next to the train station. On the 11th floor I think (it was pretty high) It was a cool view of the city. The next day we got up at a decent our and hit an art museum, The Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. It was a really nice museum. A bit smaller than I thought it would be. Then we took a taxi across town to the Nijo-jo Castle. It was really nice. A lot of fun. Beautiful and very interesting. Here are several pictures. We couldn’t take any pictures inside the buildings. My favorite part inside was the squeaky floor. It was called a Nightingale Floor. It was designed to make noise whenever someone walked on it so they could tell if intruders were there. At one point, walking through the area, I couldn’t seem to make the floor squeak so I was kind of skipping along – a guard just happened to be behind us (a woman) and she was really nice about it, but was like no jumping please only walking – I was super embarrassed – an adult acting like a kid

Ninomaru Park

After the castle, we went to a Manga Museum. I think it was called the International Museum of Manga. It wasn’t at all what we expected. It was more like a big library of Manga comics than an actual museum. I took a couple pictures of some really cute stuffed animals. This was my favorite.

That about finished off our time in Kyoto. We didn’t get to see as much as I thought we would BUT the weather was pretty unbearable, so I think we did the best we could considering the circumstances.

Okay, I have to get to work. It’s my ½ day!!! And then my weekend. I have many more stories to tell hopefully I can get them out and get caught up with my time in Japan!

So far this is the only big Japanese event we’ve been to. It was sort of a sneak preview of what any big event would be like. PACKED full of people. Just today, we were shopping (looking for a little inexpensive computer desk) and the store we were in was having some sort of sale because it was totally packed. Up until these 2 occurrences, I haven’t really felt the crowds like I was expecting to. But, yeah when it is crowded, it is SUPER crowded.

These fireworks were shot off at Harborland/Meriken Park right by the sea. We had to work and then went home to change into comfortable clothes before going, so as we were still walking to where we wanted to watch, they started. When we got closer and saw how crowded it was, we decided to stop a ways back. We still had a decent view except sometimes the fireworks weren’t high enough so they fell behind the big Mosaic mall building. I took a couple pictures, and they of course didn’t turn out all that great, but you get the idea:-)

For those of you who don’t know, nowadays most Japanese only where Kimonos (made usually with silk) or Ukata’s (cotton Kimonos) on special occasions such as festivals. So the Summer festival was filled with tons of people wearing their Ukata’s.

These girls were so cute, they thought I wanted them to take our picture, so when they realized they were sort of embarrassed and a little nervous but aren’t they pretty:-)

Some innocent people minding their own business:-)

This was in the underground shopping area leading from the park to the train station, just to give you an idea of the crowd. Pretty blurry, sorry, I was walking while taking the picture so I didn’t get run over.

Last but not least. We couldn’t resist taking a picture of this ad on the train. We just thought it was a little funny.

Coming up next, our adventures with Annie, Chris’ mom while she was in town for about 2 weeks.

First – Step through our Front door. We are in an apartment, but it seems more like a duplex, because there is only the one apt. just above us in our building.

Here’s the hallway with the front door at the end. The No sandals outside is to remind Chris not to use his inside sandals outside.

After stepping into our hallway, to the left is our Sink, Washing Machine and Shower/Bath (below)

The toilet is in it’s own little room. Kind of nice.

Our kitchen is linked with our living room (the little area that Chris was sitting in in the last set of photos)

Out the windows/sliding doors on the opposite end of the front door leads out to our little Backyard/Garden. It’s really nice to have our own little place like this because land is so sparse in Japan. We haven’t done anything with it, so it’s super overgrown right now. We’ve been waiting partly because we’re thinking about trying to find a different place that’s less expensive. The Nova apartments are more expensive than they should be.

More of the backyard (above and below)

MY SCHOOL BRANCH

This is the small office for our Staff. Another picture just below.

Voice is a special type of lesson, where students just come in and practice casual conversation based on random topics that usually us teachers have to come up with. This is the voice room.

These are the classrooms. Not what most people would picture. But keep in mind that the largest class I ever have in these rooms is 4 people.

Another view of the Classes

Thanks to everyone who emailed, wrote, said Happy Birthday! I had a great day. A few of my students gave me gifts as well as the Japanese Staff at my school branch. Chris made me a delicious dinner, bought me flowers and gave me some very cute, sweet gifts.

Okay. That’s all for now!

So today would have to be up there as one of the best days I’ve had so far in Japan. I don’t know if it was just me being in a really good mood – I’m sure that was a part of it. So a normal full day has 8 lessons. Today I started at 10am. I got to work a little early because I thought it was the start of a new week for kids classes – new flashcards, vocab, etc. But I was wrong. Not so bad, I had time to review throughout the day. I had 3 kids’ classes (2 kinder – 3-5yr olds and 1 junior – 6-9 yr olds). They actually went really well. I had a couple trouble makers but overall it was still okay. Then I helped out Steve, another instructor who was doing his first kids class today. He was a little nervous. After that, I took my break. Walked the short distance to the Daiei (grocery store) but it was super hot. I grabbed some fresh pineapple pieces and a thing of sushi that I thought was tuna. When I brought it back I asked another instructor to tell me what it was and he said it was Natto (not exactly sure on the spelling), which are fermented soybeans. In case you didn’t know, Japanese eat quite a bit of beans. They have a ton of bean paste type desserts that I just haven’t taken a liking too. Anyway, a lot of students have told me that I should try Natto, kind of laughing saying that most foreigners don’t like it. So here I am in our staff room, with Mark and Kaori, one of our Japanese staff. They’re both watching me intently waiting for my reaction. I take a bite, at first, not so bad, not the most pleasant thing, but then as I continued to chew, it just got worse, it kept getting more and more gooey and NOT good tasting. So, at least I tried it. Kaori was laughing hysterically at me. I’m glad she got such a kick out of it. A lot of the students in the voice classes (classes where we just sit around and talk casually for 40 min.) also said I should try Fugu (blowfish). This for those of you who don’t know, is kind of a delicacy here, pretty expensive, but most of all, it’s a poisonous fish. Prepared improperly results in death. It’s eaten mostly in winter time I guess from what they were saying. I’m still pondering.

After lunch I had a man to man (single lesson where the person pays for all the seats in the class (up to 4 people total) to be the only one with the instructor). It was with this pretty nice woman. She was 15min. late though so the lesson was really short. And she just wanted to continue talking about exchanging money in case she goes overseas. After this lesson I had a free so I was reading up on this special kids summer school thing that we’re going to do in August. Next was supposed to be voice. Normally we have tons of people and they are the same people that come everyday and they stay all day. But today this was not the case. There was no one there. So I had another free. My last lesson was a no show so that was 3 free classes in a row!

Going a little backwards, Thursday and Friday were our 2 days off, our weekend if you will. We spent a nice relaxing two days off. I cleaned a lot, got a lot of laundry done and just enjoyed the time off. Last night we took about an hour walk sort of in our neighborhood. It was pretty nice out by this time as the sun was beginning to set. We walked up hill quite a bit and got a great view of most of Kobe city. We could see all the way down to the ocean. We could see huge ships out quite a ways. I wish I had brought my camera with me. I’ll have to take that walk another time and bring it with me so you can all see what I mean.

I do have a couple more photos for you. Oh, Before I forget, I was thinking about today how I need to take some pictures of some of the girls here. They dress so strangely. The best way I can describe it is Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan – Or more simply put, like hookersJ It’s bizarre.

So first are a couple pictures of the shrine in Sannomiya (the central part of Kobe)

Then I took a couple pictures of my school and the Train Station which if you look carefully are right next to each other. In the Train Station photo you can see Nova Flags, that’s my school.

And last is a silly picture of Chris – I really like taking these, and as you can see by his face, he isn’t quite as amused as me. But this is kind of our living room area. Which is in the same room as our kitchen. More photos of our apt to come.

Oh last thing – Tomorrow is my 27th birthday – Happy Birthday to me!!! I have to work… oh well. It should be a fun topic of discussion for my classes.

After the earthquake that was in Niigata, I received a lot of concerned emails. We are OKAY! This earthquake was quite a ways from Kobe, so we didn’t feel it although some other teachers at different schools said they felt a very small aftershock.

Just 1 or 2 days before, there was quite a typhoon that went through the area as well. This was through us, but I didn’t really think it was all that bad. Our city is kind of protected by Mountains and another Island right in front of our port area which probably gets the grunt of the storms. But it was still my first typhoon!

For those of you who emailed, thanks for your concern!

Also, I can receive emails to my cell phone now for free. so you can email me at saminjapan07@ezweb.ne.jp

Here’s a pic from the earthquake (i did not take this)