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Bitter Sweet Adventure in the Land of the Rising Sun

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!!!