This year marks the fourth year in a row that I have spent Thanksgiving away from home.  It marks the second year I haven’t celebrated with a traditional turkey dinner.

However…I feel that watching a bunch of overweight men wrestle on the holiday that I usually celebrate by getting a little fatter myself was quite apropos.   So…Scotty and I went to sumo!  Yay!  Although the sport itself is relatively low on the exciting meter I had a lot of fun!  (Fun greased by copious amounts of sake )

We got to see a Yokozuna (the highest rank) battle one of Fukuoka’s own celebrity sumo wrestlers.   The Yokozuna won.   At the end of the match (last match of the day) everyone threw their seat cushions.  That was fun except mine didn’t go very far…it bounced off the head of the guy sitting in front of me.  (oops)

[the stadium is set up with "box" seats and "stadium" seating.  Stadium seating is western style but the box seats are literally boxes about 4 feet x 4 feet and they have four flat cushions that you sit on.  So basically, on the floor.  We paid for the cheaper stadium seats but moved to the box seats later on.]

After that Scott and I felt it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without stuffing our faces with something.  So we went to a buffet in Canal City and feasted on pasta, potstickers, pizza, curry and rice, tacos, crab legs and weird jello drinks.  Not the usual Thanksgiving fare but still delicious.  I was only sorry that I couldn’t nap and then go back for more.

Hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

This weekend I went to my first onsen (natural hot springs). I was excited because I had heard so much about them and thought it would be beautiful and relaxing. Well…it wasn’t.

It was, actually, more like what one would think of if it was called a “public bath” instead of an onsen. First, you take off all your clothes. Then you go sit on a little box (lined up next to a million other little boxes) and take a shower (…you’re supposed to scrub yourself off before you get in the bath and mingle with everyone else’s nudie body.) Theoretically this would be ok except noone wants to scrub the really dirty parts of their body in front of everyone else. So…there was a lot of arm washing and back scrubbing but that’s about it. Then everyone dunks in the hot bath. blech.

So…its like having a nice hot bath at your house except you had to pay for this one and share it with a bunch of other people. Not to mention the water actually looks murky and dirty.

So if you are planning a trip to Japan because of the “green tea and onsens” you should save your money for something more worthwhile (and sanitary).

Finally I have my computer back and can post some pictures. A couple weekends ago Scotty and I went to Kyoto. Fall is supposed to be the best time to visit because there are so many red maples so the fall colors are marvelous. However, the colors are a little late this year so there was still a lot of green when we went. But it was still stunningly beautiful. Here are some pics for you!

Scotty and me at the Imperial Palace

Kinkakuji – The “golden” temple

Ryoanji – most famous Zen garden in Japan

some fall colors

Kiyomizudera – most famous temple in Kyoto

a real Geisha in Gion! (its a bad picture I know)

monkey mountain in arashayama (just outside of Kyoto)

view from monkey mountain

cute monkey!

yum

well, that’s our trip. I’ll spare you from the other 250 photos I took. The monkeys on Monkey Mountain were very nice. It was cool to see them in their “natural” habitat and not in a zoo.

Today while everyone else ate boiled fish (regular sized, not tiny this time) I made myself a nice bowl of ramen. 

I put the ramen in the bowl, poured the spice packet on top and prepared boiling water to add before covering the bowl  so the noodles could cook.  This seemed normal enough to me (it IS how you make cup o` noodles after all) until almost the entire (and I mean nearly all thirty) teachers had gathered around to look at the freak who wasn`t *gasp* cooking her ramen!!! 

This led the teachers to run around the break room searching for a pot so that I could cook my noodles, not believing they would be edible if they just cooked in the bowl.  When I told them, “its ok, just give them 5 or 10 minutes” they collectively gasped and started looking frantically around at each other murmuring “ju pun?!? ju pun?!?” (ten minutes?!?  ten minutes?!?)

Finally when I told them, “ah, guess its just a weird American thing” one of the teachers shrugged his shoulders and said “yeah but when in Rome…”

….that reminded me of a joke Scott and I overheard in Kyoto…. :

a professor was teaching class and happened to pose the question “If everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?”  the first student responded: “no way!” the next student responded: “of course not”  the third student answered: “Hai!”

I had written a big long blog about girls here being pigeon toed but it was nearly as pointless as their deformity.  So here it is in short form:

 Girls here think being pigeon toed is cute.  But many of them take it to such a degree that they are almost hobbling down the street sort of dragging at least one foot that is turned in so much its almost perpendicular to the other foot.  At first I thought it was an actual deformity.  But if you watch long enough you can see 1) the affected foot switch to the other foot or 2) the pigeon toe go away in order for them to climb the stairs more easily, navigate around people, etc.

It is bizarre.  But its not cute.

I have rediscoverd saltine crackers.  so simple yet so delicious.

I spend nearly all my free time at work researching and planning vacations.

My first year teacher always asks me to help during my off periods and it drives me nuts.

I learned how to say “I`m going to throw up” in Japanese but so far have not had to use it yet.  (I`ll have to wait until I see what today`s lunch is :-p)

Today is Friday and I am so ready for the week to end.  After a series of four day weeks this five day thing is killin me.

I haven’t felt this awkward since my first day of high school lunch. :-\ At one school the teachers who don’t have a homeroom all sit together in the cafeteria. I don’t know what’s worse: when they all yammer on in Japanese and completely ignore me or when they try to talk to me in weird one-English-word-to-ten-Japanese-words style. Actually, the worst thing is probably me trying to answer them in the reverse of that.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I am the only person without a matching disgusting lunch on a matching lunch tray. Perhaps it is only alienating me that I am usually eating a delicious ham and cheese sandwich on french bread with yogurt for dessert while they are shoveling down tiny fish, shredded egg with radish, chunks of chicken fat in broth and a whole liter of milk. (I KNOW they can’t think that tastes good; I just know it!!)

The good news is that, aside from impromtu meetings held over my head as I sit at my desk, lunch is really the only awkward time of day…and its only one of my schools so just every other week at that.