Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji:
I’ve been vigilantly studying the language. I go in phases, sometimes I work on conversational communication, then I tire of that and switch to studying the Japanese characters and writing- this is what I’ve been really into lately. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Japanese written language, let me quickly try to attempt an explanation, although keep in mind that I am no expert! Japanese use three types of characters when writing: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana and Katakana, referred to simply as Kana, are phonetic symbols (sound chunks) and represent pronunciation, whereas Kanji are Chinese characters that have been assimilated into the Japanese language and represent ideas or concepts. There are 46 Hiragana and 46 Katakana characters and with some solid studying, I’ve found they are relatively easy to learn in a matter of a few weeks. Kanji, however, is another story! There are over 20,000 Kanji and many are so detailed and have so many subtle variations that they are very difficult to learn and take daily exposure and study. I’ve heard that if one were to learn between 250 and 500 of the most common Kanji, you’d be able to read most if the signs and newspapers in Japan. But to master Kanji takes a lifetime of study. My supervisor once told me that even Japanese adults sometimes come across a Kanji that they don’t know. Kanji I’ll save for later, right now I’m working on my mastery of the Kana. The more curvy, swirly Hiragana underlies the basic structure of the Japanese writing system, whereas the more angular Katakana is used to construct sounds of foreign origin. This is helpful because if you recognize the angular Katakana, you know it will most likely be a foreign (most likely English) word being represented- you just need to sound it out and smoosh the sounds together and you’ll figure it out. For example: “cho-ko-re-tu” is… chocolate, and, “in-ta-byu” is…interview. See? If you see the curvy Hiragana, then your mind will prepare to start scanning through the files of Japanese vocabulary it is familiar with. Kanji is easy to identify because it is block-like, and has many dense, detailed marks. (see the pictures above and below). Currently I have learned all the 92 Kana characters and what their sounds are. But this doesn’t mean I can read quickly! Imagine a 2nd grader who knows all the letters and sounds, but needs some time to blend them together to make words… that’s me! I’m getting faster though and am, of course, exposed constantly. One of my favorite things to do if I’m waiting for the train or something is to read the Hiragana and Katakana on the signs around me. Katakana I can usually figure out the foreign word, and when I sound out a Hiragana word, I look it up in my little dictionary and when I find it I feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The hard part is remembering new vocab words!

This is Kanji

Here's a pic of another onsen I visited on that same trip that I found that other one (see previous blog entry). This one had a riverside onsen as well, but it wasn't RIGHT next to the river, and not nearly as hot or beautiful. The real beauty of this place lies in the ancient structure of the inn in which the onsen is located. This is an extremely old building... built in the late 1800's. It too smells of dry wood, rice and tea, and it seems to be a labyrinth-like structure that winds and twists. You wouldn't know this by looking at it from the outside! This place is called Naruru onsen, and it has both an inside and outside onsen. The inside one was a mixed male and female onsen, which is a bit more rare, and one wall of the onsen was natural stone mortared together. the water was the hottest yet that I have been in and I began tingling after about a 5 min dip. I was only able to stay in for about 5-6 mins at a time. For those of you die hard hot-tubbers who may be scoffing at me- just trust me, these thermal waters made the hottest of hot tubs feel like a puddle in the sun. I felt perfectly like an overcooked noodle of spaghetti- it was fantastic.

Preying mantis are everywhere. I love watching them and picking them up. There are a small number of insects that can turn their heads to look around and this creature is one of them. It's so cool when you can see them looking at you... it just makes me automatically think that they are a more intelligent insect, and possibly have more of a soul than your average fly or mosquito. Plus, their head resembles that stereotypical "Area 51 Alien" image... makes me wonder...

I was driving around one day and just started snapping some pics. This is your average little neighborhood... a most common sight.

Well not much has been going on lately. It was a normal week except on Wednesday our school hosted the Miyagi Prefecture Ekiden. The Ekiden is a 6 person, km, cross-country relay race. There were 34 teams from all over the Miyagi Prefecture at our school. Classes were cancelled for the day, but all the kids had to come to school and had the job of cheering at different locations on the race course. Our school came in last for both the boys and girls race, but really the only reason we had participants is because the host school gets an automatic berth. A different school hosts the event for 3 years in a row, and this was the first of our 3 years. I wonder if this will prompt our runners to train harder and if we will do a little better next year?

These are some random pics from around my area. Hopefully, these will give you an idea of the feel and geography of life in the Inaka (countryside). Enjoy!

This pic below is actually one of my favorite pis I've taken. It really captures the spirit of both the area I live in, and the work going on this time of year. In the foreground you can see the rice farmer aboard the rice harvesting machine. These are everywhere. Moving up you see rice that has been cut, clumped together, and is stacked on these long poles. I've dubbed these stacks, "Rice Ghosts" because they ihave the eerie feeling that they might spring to livfe at any second. The look like huge cylindrical scarecrows that have been stripped of their clothes, arms and legs. You could make a fantastic horror movie with these things! "Children of the Rice." Finally, at the top of the pic you can see the ever present mountains that seem to have no end. I like how the value changes as they get farther in the distance. This is an example of a classic art lesson I do with my students on value. I saw this scene as I was driving on one of the main roads and I just had to pull over and snap this pic. I like how it captures so much of the feeling around this part of the country.

Town Announcements/Songs:
An interesting part of living in rural Japan is the town announcements and songs that are broadcast over a loudspeaker at regular intervals throughout the day. The first broadcast comes every morning at 7:00 and it is in the form of a song. While I thing the idea of these songs and announcements is a good one, for reasons I’ll explain later, I have the unfortunate pleasure of having one of the 10 or so speakers in the valley located right outside my house. Actually, the speaker is maybe 75 yds away, but the volume is so loud that it seems to be right outside my window. Think Saturday and Sunday mornings, you worked a hard week and are looking forward to sleeping in when suddenly, “BLING, PLING, DING DONG DONG DING DING DING!!...etc” This is a good 40 sec song, which can feel like an eternity when you’ve been snapped out of a lovely dream and are waiting for the torturously loud tune to end in hopes that you can get back to it. During the week, however, this song is ok because it lets everyone know that the day has begun and it is time to get up and go to work.

Then next song comes at 12:00 sharp and is the “lunchtime” song! It’s cute, really; literally everyone in town who works at a job where you can decide your own lunch schedule has lunch at this exact time. At my school, we have class till about 12:15 and lunch time is at 12:30, but when I’m at the BOE on Fridays I get to enjoy lunch time with the majority of the town. Lunch time is a quiet peaceful time at the BOE; they dim or turn off the lights altogether, the talking gets quiet and is never about work, sometimes the boss will turn on the one TV that is next to his desk and people can watch the game or news, many people drift off to sleep for a 20 min nap, and that’s totally ok! I think many American establishments need to take a page out of the Japanese textbook here and stop making lunch a stressful, working time. It’s neat to actually see people recharged after lunch, and many literally roll up their sleeves to eagerly tackle the last part of the day- you can actually feel this change of energy in the air.

The third song comes… can you guess when? Yep, right at 5 sharp. It’s the “time to go home” song. While some people go home at this time, others stay past 5, but this is a time when you can take off your tie, or change into a track suit (see a future blog entry for more about that), relax, have a smoke… you get the idea. You aren’t officially getting paid, so you can work at your own pace. I usually am home at about 4:30, since my contract is from 8:00 to 4:00, and I must admit I feel a pang of guilt knowing that most of my colleagues are back at work, slaving away, but there is really nothing more I could be doing, and this is kind of expected from the JET’s anyway.

In between the 5:00 song and the final, “sleepy time: 9:00 song there are sometimes announcements. About 60% of the time a bear has been seen around Ichihasama, and the announcement tells whereabouts the bear was seen, what time, what direction it was headed, and warns people to stay out of that area. I always feel bad when I hear this because usually a hunter is dispatched to kill the bear. The bear is then prepared for consumption and in Kurikoma, the next town over, one can order bear as a delicacy. Poor bears. This year, there have been more bears around Ichi than any other year because for some reason, there is a shortage of food for the bears in the mountains. I haven’t figured out exactly why but I’ll keep you posted. Other “in between” time announcements serve to inform people of town happenings: parades, festival fireworks, sporting events, where to get tickets, start times and end times, etc… Sometimes, it tells about a typhoon that is on the way and how sever it is. I quite like the whole idea of these town announcements. I feel that they really bring the town together and everyone has the same information and is on the same page. It gives the town a family feel, too. I like the safety aspect of it as well, as far as bears and typhoons. I’m sure if a child were ever kidnapped they would use these speakers as an “Amber Alert” vehicle, too. At first I couldn’t understand a thing of what was being said, but now I can at least pick up a few words and know what it’s about… and that feels good. Just last week the 5:00 song changed and that was refreshing. I wonder if they have songs for different seasons or what? I’ll keep you informed!

On the same day I found the riverside onsen, I also found this neat little gorge called Hanayama Gorge. It was so small, I was very surprised it was even named, but upon heading down to explore it, I found it to be quite beautiful. Again, this was a small piece of Japan that reminded me so much of Oregon… I was happy I found it. Basically it’s only about 5o yards long, with the sided being solid mossy rock. The river narrows to about 7-10 feet but the water isn’t moving too fast because it gets very deep in this part. It was a nice day, and I was so tempted to jump in and explore the water and depths, jumping spots, but was a bit reticent because the air temperature was only about 75 degrees and I didn’t have a towel or anything. Plus, I’ve discovered about myself that I a little seed of caution is planted within me when I’m in another country. I mean, who knows? Maybe this one river in Japan has a Loch Ness Monster type of creature, or poisonous snakes, or maybe the sign on the road said, “Warning!: This water is like Hydrochloric Acid, and you may not feel it right away, but anyone swimming in this water, particularly if you jump in this water around the Hanayama Gorge area, will find their skin painfully dissolving off of their body after a matter of minutes! You will most surely DIE! Especially foreigners! American foreigners who are alone right now! Thank you! ” the sign could’ve said that, you know? How am I supposed to know otherwise? So with a friend or two, and warmer temps, I will surely go back there and spend the day frolicking about in the (acidic?) waters of Hanayama Gorge!

In this pic, in the distance, you can see the perfect sandy beach at the downstream side of the gorge, located, as if by design, right adjacent to a calm, peaceful, deep swimmin’ hole! Yes! With beers, towels, snacks and tunes, this is my definition of paradise. Then a short 1 mile hike to that riverside onsen at the end of the day? Fuhggetabout it!!

Thanks to all of you who have been reading my blog and have submitted a comment or have dropped me an e-mail. I really appreciate it. It feels great to know there are people out there keeping tabs on my and my experiences here in Japan.

I just discovered that I can insert multiple pictures per post so I’ve decided to start including a lot more pictures and smaller chunks of writing. I just figure that will be more appealing to the visitor and as they say: a picture speaks 1,000 words! Here is another pic from that fabulous “rotemburo” onsen that I found last weekend. Man that was a great weekend of solo exploring and discoveries… I can’t get it out of my mind! So here’s some pics to see what I’ve been thinking about. Enjoy amigos!

This is a pic of the structure as you walk out of the woods and re-connect with the river. These Japanese inns/houses are massive, labyrinth like places smelling of tea and sweet dry wood. They always seem to be impeccably clean. I contribute much of this to the removal of shoes before entering the house- this really keeps down so much dust and dirt. I must admit, I’ve quickly and easily made the transition to this custom and strongly agree with the logic. The bottoms of our shoes are nasty things! We track in poo, dirt, oil, squished bugs, animal hair… you name it. A practice I will definitely consider continuing when I return to the US. Anyway, at this onsen I went in the house and after some nervous searching there was no one to be found. So I shouted out. “Sumimasen!” (S’cuse me? Hello?) and from somewhere deep within the bowels of the place came a “Hai! Domo!” (Yes, please!). After some creaking an old lady appeared and, hoping it would be enough to get my desire across, I said, “Onsen?” 500 yen (just under $5), the lady said, which I happily paid. She said some things in Japanese and, as usual, I just nodded, feigning understanding. She pointed down the stairs and I headed off in that direction. I learned about the little changing room closer to the onsen itself. You can see it in the left in this picture. You leave your clothes in the basket, and with the ‘courtesy towel’ skillfully in place, you head down the stone steps into liquid bliss!