The long and intricate mysteries of school lunches (Part I)

This isn't a picture of yesterday's lunch. It's a picture of a lunch we had some time ago. But that doesn't matter. What matters is what's in the picture. Or what's not in the picture? Look in the lower-left corner and you'll see a super-sized hot-dog-bun-shaped piece of bread! Yes, bread. Instead of a bowl or rice! I guess I'm back to the topic of rice...

As I mentioned before, we only have bread for lunch about once or twice a month. I am so sick of eating rice, I was sooooo thankful to have bread for lunch yesterday! Hallelujah! The world is safe again! Of course, it's not a perfect world I live in here, so what were served was white bread, not wheat bread. What's better, white rice or white bread? Hmmm. I don't know what's healthier, but I know what I prefer: white bread!

I can't stand white bread. I bet I used to eat it every day until I took a nutrition class in college and found out that white bread is basically a worthless, nutrition-less substance. Since then, I've done my best to eat avoid white bread. The same goes with white rice, though, right?

Before I came here, I didn't eat rice that often, but I did eat it. And I probably ate more white rice than brown rice or wild rice. But at least I know that brown rice and wild rice exist. Sure, brown rice and wild rice cost more than white rice. But why can't we have something other than white rice at least once a week, for crying out loud! Can you tell I'm getting sick of rice?

I also know that butter and rice tastes better than plain rice. But do they ever serve butter? Nope. And I know that soy sauce on rice tastes better than plain rice. But don't even think about putting soy sauce on rice here. People will look at you like you're nuts!

Once time for lunch when we had a particularly delicious sauce with our main dish, I poured some of it on my rice. Sure enough, I got a couple of those strange looks that time, but I didn't care! That was some good sauce and I wanted it on my rice. But I quickly found out another reason you don't put any sauce on the rice they serve here, besides the strange looks you get: The sticky rice loses its stickiness, and good luck eating non-sticky rice with chopsticks.

Last week was quite a week in the dorm cafeteria. Tuesday was "Food Appreciation Day." My predecessor mentioned that we would be "celebrating" that day once a month, but since we didn't have such a day in August, September, or October (or was I out of town each time?), I figured they must have trashed the idea. Boy was I wrong.

Just before lunch, I found out from a teacher that we were having the "hungry menu" as he put it. "Oh, no, not Food Appreciation Day!" I thought. Crap! See, on Monday I felt really sick at lunchtime so I gave away most of my food. By Tuesday, I had regained my appetite and was ready to chow down. Why couldn't Monday have been Food Appreciation Day!?

Tuesday's menu was soup, salad, two tiny fish about the size of sardines, and, you guessed it, RICE. I happen to like sardines, so I expected the fish to at least taste good. Wrong. I'm not sure exactly how the fish were prepared, but they were dry as a bone and just about as crunchy as a potato chip.

The teacher I was sitting with (good ol' Moto!) told me that the kids at our table were talking about how the lousy food was having the wrong effect on them. Instead of them thinking, "Geez, I sure am thankful for all the other days when I have such delicious food in such large quantities," they were thinking, "This food sucks! We're hungry!" I have to admit, I was thinking pretty much the same thing. I mean, I wasn't just thinking about how hungry I was, I was thinking that the kids must be pissed!

The weird thing is, you could eat as much rice, soup, and salad as you wanted, as long as it lasted at least. Isn't that sending sort of a mixed message? You can eat as much as you want at just about every meal, as a matter of fact. Nevertheless, I hardly ever go for seconds. Tuesday would have been the perfect day to go for seconds, but I was so put off by the food, I stuck with my one serving and suffered.

Wednesday's meal was back to normal, but I would rate it rather high on the scale. And then, well, you can't beat Thursday's meal: Steak! What the heck is going on here? On Tuesday we were made to suffer and two days later we're being treated like royalty? Say what?

Of course, the steak meal was not without its adventure. Half the school, the senior-high-school students and their teachers, was having steak on Thursday, whereas the other half, the junior-high-school students and their teachers, was having teriyaki fish. On Friday, the process was reversed. I didn't quite understand that until Thursday. That's why when the "lunch lady" asked me on Tuesday if it would be okay if I had steak on Thursday and fish on Friday (Fish Friday!), I said, "Sure."

Most of the time, the students sit in the cafeteria by grade. 1st-graders sit in the back of the cafeteria on the left, the 6th-graders sit in the back on the right, and the other "-graders" sit accordingly, in a U-shaped pattern. Normally at lunch I sit with the junior-high-school students, because I work with them way more often than I work with the high-schoolers. But since I was having steak, the lunch lady directed me to sit with some of the high-school teachers. (To be continued...)

A funny thing happened on the way to the ... school

Actually, more than one thing happened and nothing that happened was really funny. But what happened was different. The differentness of my day started this morning because I left my apartment early. Early means 7:30 a.m. Usually, I leave around 8:00 a.m. Why did I leave early? Because one of my neighbors, Moto (short for Motohiro), asked me last week if I'd be interested in walking to school with him. (All of my neighbors either work at the school or are married to someone who does.)

I've been walking to school since I moved from Takachiho to Gokase. I'm not sure exactly how far from school I live, but I estimate the distance is around 2 km, and I need about about 20-25 minutes to walk to school. For the most part, even though there aren't sidewalks along the entire route, the walk is pretty safe. The last 10 minutes are the safest, since during that time I walk along a back road with very little traffic. (Here's a picture of us, on that very back road, taken on December 11.)

Anyway, I usually leave my apartment around 8:00 because I am not required to be at school until 8:30. All the other teachers (and, from what I gather, the entire office staff) are expected to be at school and at their desks by 8:10. Getting to arrive "late" is just one of countless perks I have being an ALT, or assistant language teacher.

Yeah, so leaving at 8:00 to go to school makes perfect sense whereas leaving at 7:30 is crazy. But sometimes craziness is rewarded.

Moto is Japanese. I'm American. Moto is eager to improve his already good English. I'm eager to improve my beginner Japanese. I'm still a bit chicken to speak Japanese with Moto, since his English is so good, but I'm not chicken to ask him the ol' "How do you say (blank) in Japanese?" and I'm not chicken to ask him "What do those kanji (Chinese characters) mean?"

So today, on the way to school, instead of trying to learn Japanese on my own, from one of several books, I learned from a much better source: a human! What did I learn? I learned how to ask "Are you sick?" (Moto was sneezing) and how to say "Who's the girl on the left/right/in the middle?" (we saw several elementary-school students walking to school). And I learned the kanji for "kindergarten" (we passed the bus stop near the kindergarten). Stuff like that. What I learned may not seem like much, but every bit counts.

When we got to school, I had another new experience, thanks to arriving early. I saw four students standing in front of the main entrance to the school, greeting their fellow students as they walked past them on their way to one of the side entrances (since the kids don't enter through the main entrance). My first reaction was, "I guess this has been going on since I've been coming to school, but I never knew it. It's a good thing I came to school early for once to see this!" (I actually arrived at school at about 7:45 the day we went on the hike to Mt. Aso, but that was not a regular school day, so there were no greeters.)

From what I understood, those particular kids had that duty on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of this week. And I'm pretty sure they'll be there on those days next week, too. But I'm not sure how many weeks that duty lasts. Oh, and they start greeting kids around 7:45 and stop around 8:05 or so, or around the time most of the kids have arrived at school.

What I find a bit odd about the greeting duty is 1) we are talking about kids greeting kids, not the staff greeting kids, and 2) this is a boarding school, which means that the kids are being greeted just moments after arriving from the dorm, which is a two-minute walk away! (The walk is actually shorter for teachers always and for students heading to and from the dorm during regular school hours. For whatever reason, before and after school, when the kids walk to and from school, they have to take a slightly out-of-the-way route. It's a bit hard to explain, but basically, instead of taking a beeline from the dorm to the school, when they exit the dorm they have to take an exit stage right, go up a staircase, walk back downhill to the parking-lot entrance, and then take a hard left to enter the school grounds. There are other quirks like that that I hope to mention some other time on this blog.)

Yeah, and to cap off my morning, well, as soon as I walked into the teachers room, I noticed a few people in there who are almost always only in there for one reason: whenever we have meetings! So arriving early also meant that I had the pleasure of sitting in on a lovely teachers' meeting.

You can imagine how fun it is to take part in a meeting when you don't understand a lick of what's being talked about. Then again, for the most part, the meetings only last 15 minutes at the most and seem to be a great way for the teachers and staff to exchange information. Also, most teachers, including myself, get to sit at their desk during the meeting. So if I'm really bored, I can just study some Japanese or whatever. And before every meeting, the agenda is placed in our mailbox. So I usually grab it and ask someone afterwards if I missed anything important. 99 times out of 100 there's nothing of importance to me. But apparently in Japan it's important enough to attend meetings even if you don't or can't participate. So in a way, I'm did my share this morning.

(Sorry for not posting any pictures to this story. My camera died recently so the only pictures I can shoot now are those that I can take with my cell phone. Unfortunately, the quality of those pictures isn't that great. But soon enough I'll get a new camera. And I do have more pictures to post. It's just that I didn't think any of them really fit this story.)

Hiking "on" Mt. Aso

This past Friday I went hiking with the "ni-nensei" or "second graders." (They aren't really second graders as we know them, but rather the kids in the second grade of junior high school. Even in high school, you can be in the second grade! But more on that some other day.) That was the third trip I took with the "ni-nensei." (We also visited a folklore museum in Shiiba and shrines in Takachiho and Amanoiwato, but more on those trips another other day.) I was told we were going to climb Mt. Aso. We didn't actually climb Mt. Aso, however, since Aso is a volcano. As a matter of fact, Aso is supposedly the world's largest active volcano. I have no idea if that is true and, since this was the first time I'd ever seen a volcano up close, I can't exactly say it was a giant compared to others. But it was big.

In any case, we did climb a mountain and the peak we made it to the top of is called "Nakadake" (basically: "middle peak") and is 1506 meters high. There was another peak on the mountain that is called "Takadake" (basically: "high/top peak") and is 1592 meters high, but unfortunately, I only made it to about 1520 meters. You see, like I said, I wasn't alone on the hike, so I couldn't just go off on my own. I tried, but then I turned around.

I was part of a group of three that made it to Nakadake first, well ahead of the rest of the pack. I tried to convince the two kids I was with that we should go on to the next peak, since part of my climbing nature is to make it to the highest possible peak. At first they resisted, but then they came along. But after only about a minute, they hesitated again. I initially went on by myself, since I figured I would need about 25 minutes to get to the top of Takadake and back, but then decided the two kids had the better idea: We should wait for everyone else. So I reluctantly turned around.

Eventually, the whole group made it to Nakadake and we had lunch next to the peak. If you know Japan, you would correctly guess what lunch was: Yes, a bento box! Actually, we had two bento boxes: One with three triangular onigiri and the other with the "meal." I gave away my "sausage," more like a frankfurter, as well as the two little umeboshi (pickled plums) on top of two of the three onigiri, but ate the rest.

I expected to go down the same trail that we went up, which was not very steep and therefore relatively easy to climb, but our leader decided to take us around to the other side of the volcano. So we ended up hiking kind of in a big "U" around the volcano and our bus had to come around to the other parking lot to pick us up.

The closest we got to the volcano was on the way up. We were able to see part of the way down into the crater and we were also able to see smoke rising up from the crater. But without being foolhardy or paying for a helicopter ride, there was no way to get a great look inside the crater. (There appeared to be two craters, but I suppose they are considered to be one.)

The route down was a lot steeper than the route up and I was thankful then that we had hiked in the direction we had gone in because we wouldn't have had much fun climbing up that steep path. When we got to the bottom, we walked along what must have been ash or a mixture of ash and sand. I had the feeling we were walking along a desert, except that the sand was black. At one point, most of us started to cough slightly, since we could smell what I suppose was sulfur dioxide coming from the volcano, but no one got sick. We were far enough from the crater that the smell was not overwhelming.

Up until that point, we hadn't come across many people along the trail. But as soon as we made it to the parking lot, I realized how much of a tourist spot Mt. Aso really is. Every few minutes or so a tour bus pulled in to the parking lot and unloaded about 50 passengers. Most of the tourists apparently don't hike the trails. Instead, they ride the cable car up to the observation platform near the edge of the crater, eat at the restaurant, and shop in the souvenir stores. I almost wish we had gone back the way we went up so that I never would have seen the touristy part of Mt. Aso.

Oddities about baseball and softball in Japan

Before I came here, I heard that a bunch of the teachers at my school were on a baseball team called "The Bombers." So I asked my supervisor if I could join the team. Lucky for me, they were happy to have me. And about two weeks after I arrived, we had our first games. Even though that day we were just playing softball, and co-ed softball at that, I was happy to be on a ball field again.

The tournament was held at the G-park (which is presumably short for Gokase-park), a pretty nice athletic facility right across the street from the school. I got quite a dose of Japanese baseball/softball culture that day, starting with the field itself. Some of what I experienced: Most fields in Japan have an all-dirt infield; the players on the opposing teams bow to each other before the game starts; the quality of play isn't as high as I expected for a baseball-mad country like Japan; and we had to wear pin-on jersey numbers, which is apparently not a rarity. Anyway, I just did my best to go with the flow.

A couple weeks later, I finally got my first taste of Japanese baseball, starting with a nighttime practice in preparation for our first game. The first thing I noticed was that we played with "Kenko" balls, a type of rubber baseball. I had heard about them and perhaps even seen them before, but this was the first time that I was actually playing with them. What a weird feeling that was! I was so psyched to play "real" baseball only to find out that I was reduced to playing "rubber" baseball. But within ten seconds or so, I accepted my fate and decided to make the most of it. (If there's one thing I learned from all the years I spent playing and coaching baseball in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, it's that the best way to deal with cultural differences is to accept them as quickly as possible rather than fight them.)

After a few minutes, I even began to enjoy using the rubber balls, at least on defense, because they took true hops (at least in the infield!), they were easier to throw than a baseball since they were a bit smaller and lighter, and the chance of getting injured was pretty low. But when I came up to hit, I realized that unless you hit the ball square, you weren't going to do much more than hit a weak grounder or pop-up, or put a bunch of wicked backspin on the ball. It was then clear to me that games would go pretty fast. Kenko baseball is therefore kind of like softball, in that the game goes faster than a baseball game.

Oh, and batters don't wear helmets! That rule kind of stinks, but again, there's nothing I can do about it. But it's definitely no fun when a guy is throwing 60-70 mph fastballs and you're not wearing a helmet, even if the balls are made of rubber. I swear in my first game I was getting the gaijin treatment. Guess where the first pitch of every one of my plate appearances was? That's right, they went whizzing by my head!

Another thing I find odd about Japanese baseball is the spikes that many of the players wear. They have these totally old-school spikes, the kind that players wore in the United States in the 50's. And those shoes are expensive. They cost anywhere from about (the equivalent of) $70-125! That's unbelievable! Lucky for me I brought a great pair with me!

And we have four(!) (player-)umpires for our games. How ridiculous is that?

Oh, and here's one final interesting tidbit about baseball over here, at least for now: They make bats especially for the "rubber" game that have rubber barrels! My team has two such bats, and since they look like any ol' other aluminum baseball bat, it took me quite a while before I discovered that they were indeed different. All I know is, I wasn't exactly crushing the ball so I kept switching bats in order to find the "perfect" one. And at some point I put one of the specialized ones in my hands. Shazam! Guess which bat I've been using ever since? And yes, I am hitting much better. Coincidence?

Irashaimase! Irashaimase!

Here is a little video featuring one of the many speakers that are a common sight in supermarkets and other stores. They have little sensors on them and thus start up automatically when someone approaches. This particular one is located in one of the few grocery stores in Takachiho. It's called A-COOP. The "A" stands for "agriculture" or "agricultural." If you listen closely, you'll be able to hear the male voice blaring out "irashaimase!" twice in rapid succession before going on to indicate some sort of sale. I can't make out too much of what he says myself, except for a couple of prices, but by now I certainly know what "irashaimase" means. Especially in A-COOP, you hear that word a million times. It means something like "welcome," but I think it's more of a "I'm here to serve you." It's the first thing you hear in many stores, but the employees at A-COOP go a bit overboard with it. It's pretty funny how often they say it. Even the cashiers, in the middle of ringing customers up, blurt out a constant stream of "irashaimases." It reminds me a bit of walking into a Waffle House. As soon as you enter the door, you get greeted by a chorus of "Welcome to Waffle House" or whatever it was that they say.

Not all of these speakers greet customers with "irashaimase" but they all have one thing in common: They make the customer aware of a special offer. Plus, they are a bit annoying. In Tokyo we were exposed to similar greetings on the streets from store employees and other people selling various things. But, according to my buddy Carl, the concept is carried to far more ridiculous extremes in China. Thank goodness that's not the case here.

Quite a Joy Full restaurant!

There is this really cool restaurant called Joy Full that we were introduced to by my supervisor. He took us there on our first night in town. I guess you could say that Joy Full is a Japanese version of Denny's. Except that the food at Joy Full is really good! And cheap. The place really looks like a regular ol' American-style diner, with booth seating and a drink bar. And the restaurant has these fabulous menus that are full of bright and colorful pictures. That makes ordering easy for someone like me who doesn't speak much Japanese, since all you have to do is point at the picture of what you want. They even serve hamburgers, cheeseburgers, French fries, pizza, spaghetti, and ice cream, for those of you who are thinking of visiting and don't want to eat Japanese food for some reason. But if you do want Japanese food, Joy Full is also the place for you. My favorite meal is fried pieces of marinated pork served over a pile of shredded cabbage, along with rice, miso soup and a pickled vegetable, all for about $5.25, including tax (you don't tip in Japan). It's really yummy!

The picture above shows the new menu that came out recently. That gives you an idea of what the restaurant is like. Judging by the cover, it's actually almost unbelievable that the restaurant is Japanese! And the new menu has far more English than the old one. "Grand Menu"? And pictures of pizza, beef, and a hot dog? What's going on here?

To be continued...

Rice, rice, and more rice!

I'm sure you know that the Japanese eat a lot of rice. And before coming here, I knew I would be eating a lot of rice. But I didn't realize just how much rice the Japanese eat. Take a look at this dormitory cafeteria meal plan for October and you'll be able to see for yourself. I've highlighted the gohan, i.e., rice, in pink. On 20 of the 31 days in October, rice is served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! Holy cow!

I generally only eat in the cafeteria for lunch. (I have only had dinner there once and have yet to have breakfast there.) So it's not like I'm eating rice as often as the locals. But get this: We just bought a bag of rice for the first time in Japan the other day (5 kg for about 1980 yen). So now we have started having rice for dinner at home. I can't imagine having rice for breakfast as well, but maybe that's next.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what we have for breakfast, well, we eat stuff that we usually eat in the States, such as: various types of rolls/bread, eggs, granola, and fruit.

Of course, the Japanese eat "sticky" rice, which makes it easy to eat with chopsticks. And at lunch I've noticed that most kids (and staff members) eat every last grain of their rice! So I do my best to do so as well. In the States, people might look at you funny if you were to pick your bowl of rice clean. But over here, it's quite OK to concentrate intently so that you can get those last few grains, one by one, between the tips of your chopsticks and into your mouth.

As a matter of fact, I've noticed that most of the kids and staff members who eat in the dormitory cafeteria finish just about every last bite of all their food, not just their rice. I think I was pretty good about doing that before I came here, but now I guess I try even harder to not waste any food. Have a look for yourself at this "after" picture. Not bad, eh?

On another note: Look closely and you'll see a tiny straw for the milk (which is also served each and every day for lunch and almost every day for dinner!). I never use the straw, but I'm one of the only ones who doesn't. I think the straw is pure waste. I used to think that the Japanese had a problem with touching the milk carton directly with their mouths and therefore insisted on using the straws. But they drink from plenty of other containers without using straws. Hmmm? I smell a topic for another blog...

How do you say "I'll be back" in Japanese?

This is a picture of typical "o-miyage" that you can find all over Japan. "O-miyage" is what you give to your colleagues when you return to work from a vacation or business trip or whatever. Buying a box of o-miyage usually means that you are buying a box of some sort of individually wrapped cookie or tiny cake. Whenever you return to work, you simply put the box in the designated area and let your colleagues dig in as they please. And since in Japan teachers constantly go out of town on business or whatever, nary a week goes by when there isn't at least one box of o-miyage. And since the idea is to bring back a product that is typical for the area you visited, you get to try all sorts of different goodies, depending on where people went. I've already had rather delicious junk food from Okinawa, Osaka, and Fukuoka, for instance.

What's funny about the o-miyage pictured here is that they all have a picture of "Chigi-san" on them. Chigi-san is the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Miyazaki prefecture. I don't know too much about the guy, except that he used to be a comedian on TV. And now he's the head of the prefecture! From what I understand, since he's taken over (early this year?), he's been doing one hell of a marketing job. Miyazaki is growing and growing in popularity, and people flock from all over Japan to Miyazaki to catch a glimpse of "Chigi-san." His caricature is is plastered on everything in these parts from the o-miyage pictured above (some of the cookies even have his likeness stamped on them!) to key chains, fans, and even piggy banks. Believe me, he's popular! And like I said, he's trying his darndest to popularize Miyazaki products, one of which is the mango.

He even welcomed us at our orientation a few weeks ago in Miyazaki city. As we waited quietly in this nice room in one of the prefectural administration buildings for him to appear, we suddenly heard a bunch of shrieks. Obviously, the man was on his way. He arrived seconds later and promptly proceeded to give his speech. He started off in English but eventually switched to Japanese. And before we knew it, he was gone (to more shrieks from the public waiting patiently out in the hallway).

In any case, when it was time for our lunch break, we, too left the room, just as Chigi-san had. And what do you know? There were about 100 people lined up on both sides of the grand stairway, cameras in hand, patiently waiting for Chigi-san, obviously. Well, thinking fast, I decided to put on a little show for the crowd. I pretended they were all waiting for me so I started waiving to them all. And then I pretended for a few seconds to give a speech, yelling out a few quick thank-yous, waving some more, and posing for pictures. The crowd seemed to like it, believe it or not. Then I went on down the stairs, waving some more, saying "Hi" and "Thank you" and whatnot and shaking some hands here and there. I felt a little ridiculous but still tried to enjoy the moment that really wasn't mine!

Shoes, shoes, and more shoes!

This photo shows the scene, usually around lunch time or whenever guests might be expected, at the entrance to the school where I work. You probably can't tell, but all those little brown slippers are the same size: [very] small (at least for me). And, from what I can gather, there are no "left" or "right" slippers. They are simply all for either foot. If you visit my school and have no slippers of your own, you are going to be the lucky one who gets to wear these rather attractive slippers. Luckily, we faculty members each have a little cubbyhole next to the entrance where we can store 1 or 2 pairs of indoor slippers, because personally, I am not a fan of these brown slippers. I do have the luxury of wearing them once a day, however, when I go to lunch. See, in Japan you constantly change from indoor shoes to outdoor shoes and eventually back to your outdoor shoes. (Then again, if you don't have indoor shoes, you sometimes go barefoot or walk around inside wearing your socks.) Yeah, so basically, shoes play a HUGE role in life in Japan. At least from me. One part of that means that I have started wearing them with the laces rather loose, sort of skater-style. Not so much because of having to take them off often but rather for ease of putting them on fast. Let me walk you through a typical work day, as regards shoes.

Just before leaving the apartment, I slip into my shoes (which, as I mentioned, are easy to slip into since I have loosened the laces considerably). When I get to work (school), I walk in the main entrance, stop at that carpet (which is also a step up) and step out of my shoes. (There is a proper way of completing that that little action [imagine that!], which basically means not using your feet to help get your shoes off, but so many people break that "rule" that I do, too.)

Then, I grab my outdoor shoes and walk them about 10 feet over to my little shoes cubbyhole, and without putting my outdoor shoes down, open the cubbyhole, take out my indoor shoes/slippers, put those on, and place my outdoor shoes in the cubbyhole.

As long as I stay inside the school, I wear my indoor slippers/shoes. In my case, those are Birkenstocks, but other teachers wear regular ol' flip-flops, all sorts of sandals, "normal" shoes, whatever.

Very often you have to walk outside to go from building to building, but usually that means walking all of 15 feet or so outside, and usually that means walking along wooden pallets. So there is no need to change shoes along the way.

But as I mentioned earlier, I walk over to the dorm's cafeteria to eat lunch every schoolday, and that means changing shoes several times. First, off with my indoor shoes and on with my outdoor shoes. Then, at the entrance to the dorm, off with the outdoor shoes on on with those silly little brown slippers. Reverse after lunch.

Before coming to Japan, I thought I would be deeply insulting the Japanese if I ever broke those "rules" about indoor and outdoor shoes. But believe it or not, the Japanese sometimes break the rules themselves! I recently watched as one teacher strolled into the school building after lunch without changing shoes! Wow! And another time, shortly after I first arrived at eh school, I was given a brief tour of the school grounds and at one point we went outside without changing shoes! Holy cow! How cool!

You sort of have to have shoes stashed everywhere to make it easier to avoid going to your cubbyhole if you need to go outside. For example, you can step outside directly from the teachers' room. The border before you need to switch to outdoor shoes seems to be the parking lot cement. The balcony is fair territory for your indoor shoes, even though you're outside when you're on the balcony.

Yeah, so I placed a pair of (giant) slippers that my predecessor left me right there by the sliding door closest to my desk and marked them with the Kanji for "yama" so everyone would know their mine. And, whenever I step outside via the sliding door for some air or whatever, I put them on like a respectful foreigner. Problem is, occasionally I get confused and think the "yama" slippers are indoor slippers, since they served my predecessor as just that. I distinctly remember one time when I came in through the sliding door and put them on and walked inside. Oops! See what I mean about having shoes stashed all over the place? You can't just have indoor or outdoor shoes stashed here and there; you have to have both at all locations. Ugh!

Oh, and guess what you do when you get to the gym? That's right, you take off your indoor shoes and put on your OTHER indoor shoes, your for-exclusive-use-in-the-gym-only indoor shoes! Since I didn't bring any of those for-exclusive-use-in-the-gym-only indoor shoes with me to Japan, I'm using for that purpose the shoes that I bought for coaching baseball, since I'm not coaching baseball. And, psst, don't tell anyone: I actually wore those shoes outdoors on several occasions in the U.S. and Japan before transforming them into my for-exclusive-use-in-the-gym-only indoor shoes...

Oh, and then there are the "toilet" shoes. Yes, that's right, "toilet" shoes. When you go into a restroom, you often find more of those undersized, plastic, cheesy looking slippers for exclusive use in the restroom. And, yes, one time I really did forget to take them off before leaving the bathroom. I caught myself after walking about 30 feet in them and then simply turned around as nonchalantly as possible and put them back... SHOES!

My first visit to an onsen

Sorry for having been gone for so long. In any case, I'm back, thanks to you, Dr. K... Well, I feel like talking about my first visit to an onsen. What's an onsen, you ask?

An onsen is a hot spring. There is actually one right here in little ol' Takachiho, believe it or not, and it's not too far from the ghetto where we live, as least by car (it's about a 30-minute walk). (More on the ghetto in another post...) Yeah, so it turns out our first night here there was no hot water in the apartment, since that little item did not get taken care of before our arrival. So the suggestion was made that we go to the onsen. So off we went. Courtney's supervisor took us there and got us started, but he then went home (and said he'd pick us up about an hour later).

What I mean by getting us started is: he showed us the ticket machine and helped us buy our ticket, for 500 yen (about USD 4.35), and then showed us which entrance was for the women and which one was for the men. And off he went. [But let me back-track a bit here. From what I remember, that onsen was the first place in Japan where I had to take my shoes off before entering. That was my little introduction to a major piece of Japanese culture. (I'll go into that in another post. There really is a lot to write about, but I can't do it all at once!)]

Okay, so there I stood, in front of the entrance to the men's part of the onsen, not really knowing what was in store for me. It sure would have been cooler/easier had Courtney's supervisor gone with me to show me the ropes! But no, I was all alone to figure things out. So in I went, sliding the door open to see what I was in for. The first thing I saw was a changing area. In other words, you get naked, put your clothes in a basket in a cubbyhole, and move on to the "onsen" part of the onsen. Problem was, there was almost no one around and I had no clue through which door to go since everything was marked in Japanese of course! I really had no clue if that door over there was just a door to a closet or a door to a bathroom. And what was behind that door there? Hmmm... See, I didn't want to do anything wrong, not so much because I might have embarrassed myself, nope, but rather, because I was a bit afraid of offending someone culturally-wise, by doing the wrong thing.

Yeah, so there I was, naked except for the little towel I brought along, minding my own business, trying to act like I knew what was going on but really having no clue what to do next. Finally, an old(er) man came in and changed (i.e., undressed). So I stalled some more and got ready to follow him. But by that time I figured out that the door he was heading to was the bathroom. Hmmm. Not good. More stalling time. Then, someone opened a different door and came out. I quickly poked my head in to see what there was to see and I could tell that that it was through that door that I had to go! At last, I knew what direction to go in. But, what then???

Finally, someone came along and went it through that door so I went in with him. I probably should have had the balls to just go for it, but I felt really uncomfortable, as you can imagine. Anyway, the first thing this guy does is head for a pool of water just next to the entrance. He then puts his towel down in a dry place and grabs a bucket and dips it in the water. And then he squats down in this, well, Japanese way, if you know what I mean, and pours the water all over himself. He poured about three buckets of water all over himself and moved on. So guess what I did? I did exactly what he did, including the ridiculous(?) little squat (as if I were a naked catcher with invisible knee-savers, keeping my back as straight as can be!) and poured the water over myself... While doing so, I scoped out what there was in the "room." To the right, I noticed the "showers." So off I went in that direction.

I found myself a little cubbyhole semi-removed from everyone else, although that was rather easy, since there were probably about 30 cubbyholes but only maybe 5 were occupied. While walking past the other guys I tried my best to figure out the washing procedure. In any case, the first thing you do is sit down on this funny little stool. And then you have your choice of filling a bucket with water and dousing yourself some more or turning the shower on and getting yourself wet that way. And then you soap up and clean yourself off.

The soap is provided in two forms: a bar of soap (I found that out later!) and two dispensers. But I was so not sure of what was going on that I didn't notice the bar of soap that was there. Or maybe it wasn't. So I dispensed some of the soap in the first bottle onto my towel and lathered up. All the while I'm looking over my shoulder trying to check out how some of the other guys are doing it and wondering why they all had such an awesome lather going and why mine sucked! Anyway, eventually I moved on the the shampooing part of my sit-down shower. And just as I started to rub the shampoo into my hair, I noticed that the two dispensers (one with soap, the other with shampoo) were actually labeled in katakana, one of the three "alphabets" used in Japanese.

So I decided to take a stab at reading them. (I doubt if you can remember what it's like when you first started to read, but if you look at the Y.A.M.A. up top, for example, and take about 10 seconds instead of about 1/2 of a second to figure out that those four letters together spell "Yama," well, that's how dumb I felt (and still do!) reading those letters on the bottles. Anyway, lo and behold here's basically what I read on the first bottle: (no, not "Rat Poison" and no, not "Bleach"): S-h-a-m-p-o-o. And here's what I read on the other bottle: B-o-d-y W-a-s-h. Guess which one I was using on my hair! Yes, the body wash! Which means I washed my body with shampoo... How lovely! Do you think anyone else noticed? So that was certainly worth a good laugh.

The rest of the time, the actual sitting in the hot water time, wasn't as exciting, to tell you the truth. But yeah, the procedure is to first cleanse your body, and then go into the water. At least I didn't screw that part up. I had about 30 minutes left to sit in various pools of water at various temperatures and then I exited. I wasn't really sure if there was a set procedure for leaving, though. Do you take another shower? Do you just take a shower without the soap? Do you dunk more water on your head? I decided to go in reverse and dunk more water over my head at the location next to the door. And that's exactly what I did. This time with just a half-squat...