りんご、運動会、千枚田 Apples, Undokai, and Senmaida

I keep telling myself to update more frequently but alas, I am often too tired after work to update. I have recently become an old man as I usually only have the energy to stay up until 10:30ish on the weekdays now. Suffice to say college Sam is very displeased.

Anyway, a few weekends ago, I kicked off my break by going apple picking with some of my fellow JETs. Fruit over here is ridiculously expensive over here (for example some watermelons over here can be up to 50$ depending on how well they’re wrapped!) thus, I really enjoyed the chance to pick some delicious fruits at a more reasonable price for once. The orchard was a small farm owned a family and the apples we picked there were quite tasty.

Delicious apples!

The rest of the day was followed by lunch at a delicious udon restaurant and then some epic Mario Party gaming over at one of the JETs apartment.

An udon feast afterwards

The next day was my towns’ undokai (or exercise gathering). This event turned out to be very similar to my school’s sports festival except for adults representing their respective villages (my “town” is technically more a collection of villages rather than one cohesive unit). The event occurred took place in Kiriko park, which was a rather cool park with a giant monument of a kiriko not too far away.

Kiriko Park

I got to participate along with several other adults from my village of Ukawa.  A few of the events that I personally did included: a game where all members stood in a line and passed a bunch of balls bucket to bucket in order to throw the balls at a cardboard fire, a relay, tug o’ war, and of course, a janken race.

Some of my teammates and I

Again, each of these games emphasized teamwork and group cooperation in a similar vein to my school’s sports festival. One highlight from the undokai was catching a glimpse of the increasingly ubiquitous Spiderman, who is becoming rather like the Where’s Waldo of events over here. Being the only “foreign” looking person at the undokai, again I attracted a lot of curiosity but my favorite moment was sitting down and having two kids (not my students) come up to me, barrage me with questions and then commence a grass throwing battle with me. They were too cute! 

Silly kids sitting next to me

A glimpse of the omnipresent Spiderman

There he is again!

Some food we were served at the Undokai. I think these were either pickled cucumbers or eggplants. They were ridiculously salty.

Our main dish at the Undokai proved much more palatable then the pickled  mystery veggies however.

After the undokai, I went to yet another Enkai, this time hosted by my board of education (thankfully however, they covered all the charges so I didn`t have to empty my wallet.) The delicious menagerie of food consisted of sushi, sashimi, veggies and meat. I was later informed that one of the fish I consumed was the infamous fugu, a fish equally known for its delicacy in Japanese cuisine and for its potential lethality if prepared incorrectly. Thankfully, it seems that our chef knew what s/he was doing as I am currently blogging to you fine folks today.

One of the dishes at the enkai (the white fish in the back are fugu).

The next day, my landlord stopped by my house and asked if I wanted some squid. Always jumping on the chance to acquire free-food, \i accepted and recived the following. Thus, I began my first time gutting a squid. Gutting it was disgusting...yet oddly satisfying. I was quite unprepared for the level of ink hidden in that little cephalopod and my cutting board is now stained a permanent black. I@d say the end result was pretty satisfactory as the stir fry I made with the squid turned out pretty well.

This last weekend, several JETs and I volunteered to set up and light candles at the Senmaida rice paddies for their annual festival. The scenery at the event and the surrounding ambiance was really quite spectacular.

Walking down the rice paddies

Fellow JETs setting up the candles

Pumped up!

There was quite a significant amount of critters roaming around the rice paddies such as this snake.

Lighting the candles

Very scenic and relaxing

The end result was truly quite beautiful.

This light up was followed by all the volunteers waving torches in the dark. I had more pictures of the event but alas, my faithful iphone met a watery grave in a puddle before I could upload the pictures. Living without it really really stinks as it was a dictionary, music player and map to me. I also found out that getting a new ipod will be exceedingly frustrating as I either have to do a 3hour drive back and forth to Kanazawa (the only place that carries them according to an electronics store employee in my area) or I have to wait 1 to 4 weeks for a new one to arrive via Japan amazon :( Part of the package of living in a rural area I suppose.