Kawasaki- Daishi, Yokohama, and the Marine Festival

This past Monday (Marine day), I went to two different festivals (sort of). Monday was a national holiday for Japan known as Marine day. Marine Day according to Wiki:

"Marine Day" was declared a national holiday in 1995 as a day of gratitude for the blessings of the oceans and to hope for the economic prosperity of maritime Japan. First observed on July 20, 1996, the Happy Monday System (ハッピーマンデー制度 Happī Mandē Seido?) legislation moved the date from July 20 to the third Monday of July from 2003.

I decided to take advantage of this and go to the "festival" being held in the Minato Mirai area of Yokohama (or what I like to refer to as downtown Yokohama) and the wind chime festival being held in Kawasaki- Daishi.


When I got off the train, the environment was a little surreal. It almost felt like I was back in Kyoto. Kawasaki- Daishi is a very traditional area that is mainly comprised of the Heiken-ji temple complex. Every year, Heiken-ji has a wind chime celebration, and I toted myself out there to go see it.


The main shopping strip was pretty filled with people. Every where you looked, there was food and traditional items being sold alongside the wind chimes.


The temple complex itself was packed with people. This is a view of the complex looking down from the steps of the main temple building. You can see the smoke from the incense "cauldron" in the center of the image.


As with every celebration in Japan, there is a TON of delicious food being sold. I indulged in strawberry shaved ice and okonomiyaki (a type of egg omelette).


All in all, the wind chime festival was awesome. I only stayed for a couple of hours as there wasn't much to do, but it was still really cool to go see. I also compiled some short video clips together that I took while I was there.

After the wind chime festival, I headed south towards downtown Yokohama to see fireworks and the events being held at the Marine festival.


Monday was the last day of the 3 day long festival and there were supposed to be fireworks and a lot of performers and cool things going on. The fireworks never happened (they were cancelled for some reason) and there really weren't any events going on either. The official website, which can be found here: http://www.yme.gr.jp/index.html, lied. Not knowing the fireworks had been cancelled, I knew I had to kill some time to wait for them to happen. The Pokemon Center of Yokohama was having a little festival as well, so I decided to head towards Landmark Tower. First, I passed through Cosmo World, seeing as I had never been there.



Pictures weren't really allowed in the area (to my knowledge), but I snapped a quick one with my phone. I bought a cute little clutch that I now keep my phone and flip cam in alongside my key and passmo, and they were handing out free shitajiki (pencil boards) at the entrance. The Pokemon Center in Yokohama is just as awesome as the one in Tokyo. Also very cool is the Moe Garden shop next door and the Jump Shop. The Moe Garden sells all Studio Ghibli items and the Jump Shop sells all Shonen Jump things. Pretty cool and very moe. :3


After leaving the Landmark Tower, I stumbled upon another magic show going on (this was actually the 3rd one I saw in a day). Magic shows in Japan are quite different than ones in America. Here, they comprise of magic, balancing and juggling acts, and small feats of acrobatics. They also typically have some sort of balloon animal routine involved. I guess they are more like jack-of-all-trade shows, really. This guy had a huge audience though. I didn't really stay to watch. :/


After all of that, I waited around 2 hours for the fireworks to start, which never happened. The Marine show pretty much was a bust, but it allowed me to see parts of downtown Yokohama I had never been to before. I did take a series of videos though.

Hadano!

On July 9th, I visited my friend (and fellow AET) Matt in Hadano. Hadano is smaller city southwest of Yokohama. Matt and I got to know each other through facebook when we both found out we were going to be in the Kanagawa branch of Interac. We sorta had orientation/ training together and have off and on chatted on Facebook, but this was really the first time we were able to hang out and just talk.

This is what his area looks like near the station:


I arrived a little after noon and headed up to his apartment. View from near his apartment:


Matt made delicious banana and almond pancakes (I helped :3) and afterwards, we headed out to walk along the river.

The walk along the river was around 2 miles, but was quite beautiful.



After we made it to the train station, I realized my passmo (train pass) was missing. I paid for a ticket back to Matt's station anyway so we could talk to the guy at the Information desk there, but they hadn't seen it. So, we walked back to his place and I dumped out everything that was in my bag. My passmo really wasn't there. At that point, he had to go to his kendo class and I decided I'd take another walk along the river to look for my pass. After walking along the river again, I couldn't find it. I talked to another guy at Hadano station this time, and he told me that since my pass was registered as a Teiki in 2009, that it was registered in their computer system. He kindly helped me fill out a form and gave me a slip of paper to show to the Tokyu desk the next day in Yokohama. I ended paying 1,000en, but I had almost 5,000en on the card. So, I didn't end up losing all of my money that day. Thank goodness! All in all, the trip was worth it. I really enjoyed visiting Hadano and would like to go back there to go hiking or maybe go to an onsen.

Saturday's Group Photo

Karaoke Passout

This past Saturday I was supposed to go see my friend Judy and her friends compete in the Dragon Boat competition. The Dragon Boat race is an annual competition in Yamashita park where people race in traditional dragon boats from Hong Kong. More can be found out about it here (in English): http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20090616ev.html

Or here (in Japanese): http://www.yokohama-dragon.com/

Since the race didn’t happen due to being rained out from the ever- encroaching typhoon (which I’m not sure has happened or not due to the lack of severe rain) everyone ended up meeting up at the karaoke place near Kibogaoka station. LUCKY! It was around 700en for around 3 hours. CHEAP! I’m super in love with this place. I took a short video of the fun. I had a blast! I love love love karaoke!

One of Judy’s friends sang a song called Secret Message and all of the characters were messed up on the screen too. We were dying. XD

After karaoke, we went to the house of Judy’s friend. Her husband made us this amazing meal. I felt like royalty. We met up with more people there too. I didn’t end up getting home until around midnight. Saturday was so amazing… so amazing I slept most of Sunday. :3

Yesterday, on my way home from work, I took a video of what I see on the train from Futamatagawa to Kibogaoka; just one stop. I had my phone pressed to the window to steady it, but most of the images are still blurry. I’m going to try and take the same video with my flip cam and see the difference in image quality.

And finally as a general update, here are some random images I’ve taken around town and a video in my apartment.

Tired. Hair cut. Percussion.

I can’t tell you how exhausted I’ve been this week so far. Being an ALT is the first full time job I’ve ever had. I’m being childish when I say this, but I’m hating the responsibility of having to show up every day. With school, I could always take a sick day whenever I needed extra sleep or just really didn’t feel like going to class, those days are over. When I feel exhausted, I have to show up anyway. I haven’t been sleeping well. There have been earthquakes in the middle of the night and even without them occurring, I keep waking up 3-4 times a night. FRUSTRATING! I’m so tired, yet my body won’t relax.

On an unrelated note I’ve been here almost 2 months. That means 1 thing absolutely needed to be done. I needed a haircut. I finally got the nerve to go get my haircut on Monday. Needless to say, that was an adventure. I went to the place probably 50m from my apartment. It is literally the building next to the parking lot of my apartment complex. The lady didn’t speak English and sorta gave me a brand new cut when I just wanted a trim. It only cost me 1,000en though and the cut doesn’t look bad by any means…. So I can’t really complain. Lol. I was grateful that I didn’t walk out of there with a shaved head with how poor my Japanese is. XD

Yesterday, towards the end of school, I had nothing left to work on, so I decided I would find the drumming I could hear in the teacher’s lounge. On the other side of the school, another floor up, I found the percussion section of the brass band! They were excited I dropped by to see what they were working on and told me I had to play drums with them… so I did. They taught me the first part of a song they were working on. I botched it up pretty bad towards the end, but had a lot of fun. I tried explaining that I had only played drums once in my life back when I was 11 or so and it was just for fun. They didn’t care and insisted I try again. Lol. After I hopped off the drums, they told me I should play chimes too. This was really cool because I had never played chimes before. I played Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and thanked them for the experience. Chimes are set up completely different than a piano. Upon leaving school yesterday, the rain started up again. It rained all through the night and was pouring this morning. I’m hoping it clears up soon.

I’m caught up again with the blog! Yay!

Leaving

I'm finally leaving. I heard from my friend Tomomi, who was at school when the quake and tsunami happened and she is fine. All of my friends are fine.

I was supposed to leave this morning, but last night I chickened out and called the airlines to see if they would let me hold off from flying for a day. They didn't put up a fight and rescheduled me to fly tomorrow morning. Same flight numbers. Same times. Different day. Bizarre.

I'm worried about the lack of food. I'm worried about the continued aftershocks. I'm worried about the power plants up north. I'm worried about the rolling black outs. I'm worried about my luggage and getting to the hotel and all the little things about traveling... but I'm still going.

I'm going because I believe I'm going to be safe. I don't think international flights would still be going to and from Japan if they felt that Japan was that unsafe of an environment. I'm going because my company feels it is safe for me there. I'm going because not only my company needs me, but because my school districts need me. I told them I would be there and I'm not backing down on my promises. I truly don't feel like I'm going into a war zone. If my placement was up north, I wouldn't be going.

My father doesn't want me to go. My aunt doesn't want me to go. My grandmother doesn't want me to go (she never did in the first place). I'm still going.

I've taken some extra precautions before leaving. I'm bringing water, 2 bags of trail mix, and a flash light with extra batteries. I will be calling the airport tonight before leaving to ask which train lines I can take and which ones would be the best to take, since a lot of the lines aren't running due to the lack of electricity. I've printed off a list of emergency contact numbers and some common emergency terms should something happen.

I know things will be hard when I first arrive. This obviously isn't how I planned how my trip would take place. I will try my damnest to try and keep contact with my family and update this blog when I first get over there. For now my heart is in the country of Japan and in 31 hours my body will be too.

It's time to start the adventure of the 23rd year of my life. がんばれ。

Travel Plans

I woke up yesterday morning with an inbox flooded with messages asking about my safety. A lot of my friends thought I was already in Japan. As most of you know, I'm supposed to be leaving on Monday. I had no idea what was going on when I first woke up. I've been sick due to a sudden allergy attack and have been sleeping in later because of it. As I turned on the tv and started reading my twitter feed I was horrified. All day yesterday I stayed glued to the tv, worked on a freelance painting I needed to finish, and tried to get a hold of my friends in Japan. I still haven't heard from my friend Tomomi, who is going to Tohoku University in Sendai, Miyagi. I'm very worried about her.

I'm in constant contact with a lot of my co-workers/ future co-workers on a daily basis due to facebook and an Interac group on there that I'm apart of. One of the members, who happens to work in the head office, said this:

"I'd like everyone to think about what's been in my mind the last few hours:
'The Kids Will Need You'
I believe this is true; and now, more than ever before, Japanese children will be looking for something good, positive, and fun in their lives. We can be that.
Give you heart to them. Don't give up."

I continued packing today. The Yokohama branch emailed me telling me this:

"Most flights to Narita airport are out of schedule still now.
Would you watch out what happens to your flight, and keep
us updated?

The earthquake caused many people in Tokyo/Yokohama
to going back home, but everyone here is OK, and preparing
for the orientation starting on Mar 21."

I was relieved to hear that everyone in the Yokohama branch was OK. I've been watching NHK and CNN non-stop. My heart is with the people of Japan. I will be with you all soon and I hope I can help in whatever way possible.