Staying Warm

This past Saturday, Adam and I were invited to a Christmas dinner with the other Canadians we know in the area.  We had a lovely time eating ham, mashed potatoes, and apple pie.  We contributed some homemade bread rolls, banana chocolate cake, and cookies to the dinner.

On Sunday, we woke up to more snow!  We decided that it could be dangerous (and difficult) biking to church so we took the train.  However, on the way home, we decided to walk.  It only took about 1 hour and 45 minutes to go from Ogaki church to our home.  Seeing as in Canada we always like to go for walks on Sunday, this was a great way to admire the snow and enjoy the early afternoon.  I think one of my favourite "pictures" was seeing an orange tree with ripe oranges and all it's leaves still on with snow all around.  Today, we woke up to snow and it's been snowing all day.

Here are some pictures of the snow.

Sunrise outside our window this morning.

Outside out front step

They have these mirrors at most intersections to help people see who's coming
with all the blind corners.

Orange tree in someone's yard.

There's still flowers on trees.

I think this is a temple- it's close to our house.

So you may be asking yourself how do you stay warm without central heating?  Do you just eat soup and drink tea all day?  While we certainly do drink our fair share of tea and eat soup, we have other ways of heating our house. First off let me say that I think Japanese people are tougher than Canadians in terms of the cold.  In Canada, we have it good.  We get into a warm car and then into a warm building and you really don't have to spend that much time outside.  In Japan, if you go out, you turn off all the heat so when you come home it's the same temperature inside as outside and the houses aren't well insulated.  At our adult English class this past week, we were talking about the weather.  Two ladies asked me if I had ever gotten frostbite.  I talked about how in Canada winters are very cold, so when you're outside you can get frostbite and you have to be careful.  Well, I was sure surprised when they shared with me about how they get frostbite on their toes in their homes!  One lady said, "Because my home is so old and it's so windy even with the windows closed the curtains blow."  

Our home is really drafty, but probably not as bad as hers.  We got our old kerosene heater up and running which heats up our whole house pretty quickly.  I guess people who lived in our house in the past didn't use it because it lets off CO.  We just got ourselves a CO detector, and crack the window open every once and a while.  Since our home is older and drafty, I don't think we have to worry too much about it even with the windows closed.  We also have two air conditioners that have heat settings.  These take much longer than the kerosene heater to warm up and are pretty expensive.  Then, we have the kotatsu which is a low table with a heater underneath that you cover with a heavy blanket (or in our case a heavy rug, I found in the closet).  Finally, we have a heated toilet seat.  I was never a big fan of heated toilet seats, but in the middle of the night when your house gets really cold and you got to go, it's really nice to have.  :)

Now, I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas.  Adam and I will be leaving on our trip to Ishigaki next week, so my next post will be all about that trip.

Sushi Restaurant and Much Much More

Welcome back to Janelle's blog.  On today's blog, we (well mostly just your host, Janelle) will be discussing three topics: a Sushi Restaurant, "How old are you?," and being part of a visible minority.

Sushi Restaurant
This past Saturday, Adam and I woke up to snow!  It all melted that day, but it was really beautiful to see it on the mountains.  We also had our first experience going to a sushi restaurant.  I haven't eaten enough sushi in Canada to know if it's similar, so I'll write about the experience anyways.  We went with a guy we met at the Tarui pia festival.  He's Japanese, but grew up in the U.S.A..  On entering the sushi restaurant there's a screen in English where you can select how many people are in your party.  The host gives you a number and that's the table number that you go to.  At the table is a touch screen that has an English option (yay!).  You order your food by going through the menu on the screen and selecting what you want.  There's a conveyor belt that passes by all the tables.  There's sushi on there that anyone can just take without ordering it.  When you order sushi, it comes on a little bowl like plate on the conveyor belt (so you know not to take other people's ordered food).  When it arrives by your table your screen makes a sound to alert you that your food is there.  The plates are about 100 yen each (about $1) and there's two pieces of sushi on them.  When you're done your meal, you press a button on the screen and a waitress comes and counts up how many plates you have and then gives you your bill.  I liked this since it didn't involve having many difficult Japanese conversations and we knew what we were ordering.  I really liked the sushi we had too.


How old are you?
I went through my blog to see if I'd already written about this, but I don't think I have.

When Japanese people meet for the first time or are introducing themselves it's common for them to ask, "How old are you?" Or to just go ahead and tell you how old they are.  When Adam and I first arrived here many people asked us our ages, including the mayor!  It's a good thing that we're fine with telling people.  At the Suitopia centre, where we took Japanese classes, our instructors would give a mini self-introduction at the beginning of class which usually included something like: "I'm Sarah, I'm 31 years old."  I'm not sure why in Canada asking someone's age is so rude.  What's the big deal after all?  I can understand in some work situations that you might not want people to know your age if you're young so that you're taken seriously.  From what I understand about Japan is that you always have to ask an older person for "permission" before making decisions in a company.  Maybe that's why they want to know your age.

Being Part of a Visible Minority
It's interesting for me to experience being part of a visible minority.  You know how on different forms one question will often be, "Are you part of a visible minority?"  I always checked "no."  So now, it's interesting to experience being so visibly different.  I can understand why sometimes people stare.  I've started to stare at foreigners too because it's surprising to see them.  I've never really noticed people's race before- maybe because in Canada you really do get a mix of everything, maybe it's a gift, or maybe it's because I'm a fairly unobservant person.  But now, everything has changed!  I see a "white" person and my eyes get stuck as I wonder, "Does s/he speak English?"  Often, s/he is looking back at me in surprise.  I wonder how going back to Canada will be with this "foreigner" radar and being able to communicate easily.

Thanks for joining me again on Janelle's blog.  Stay tuned next week for news on a Christmas party.

Nagoya Science Centre

This past Saturday we went to Nagoya.  Adam will have to work Saturdays from now until the end of January so it was our last free weekend for a while.  Unfortunately, it was a rainy day so we decided to do some indoor activities in Nagoya.

Nagoya's train station is pretty big, so of course we went out the wrong exit at first and had to back track to the other side of the station.  The walk to the Science Museum was a wet one.  When we arrived at the museum, we were met with a beautiful park.  There was a big fountain and this guy doing a choreographed dance by himself- yup random stuff in Nagoya.

The Park by the Science Museum

The giant "ball" has the planetarium inside.

On entering the Science Museum, we were given the option of three different types of tickets.  We ended up choosing the one with the planetarium.  The planetarium is the largest dome shaped "screen" in the world.  We went to the first show available in the planetarium.  We were told that it was only in Japanese and were asked if that was OK. We assumed that it would be a giant Imax type movie, so we thought it would be fine.  In the end, after 50 minutes of sitting in the dark with the night sky above us and a guy using a mouse to explain what constellations were where with some Greek mythology (all in Japanese), the show was over.  I think this experience would have been interesting if we understood Japanese.  It was kind of cool to be in a "simulated" cloud free starry night, but I was hoping to have that feeling of moving while actually being still like in Imax theatres.

After that we had our lunch and then checked out the rest of the centre.  They have this -30 C room with a simulated aurora that you can go into (you need a special ticket and to line up).  We figured that we get that in Canada and we don't have to line up for it, so we didn't go.  The centre is really big and well worth the 400 yen to see the place.

I think the coolest exhibit for me was this table with all these tiny little balls that moved according to the pitch of sound.  You could move this wand back and forth to make the pitch higher or lower.  The little balls would vibrate depending on the pitch and actually looked like real sound waves.

Here are some videos and pictures from the Science Museum:

This was a simulated tornado.

Having fun with some mirrors.

Where did your body go?

The human body exhibit.

We could see a star with this telescope.

 The sun came out as we were finishing up the science museum.  Outside there were a couple groups doing choreographed hip hop dances in front of the fountain along with a drama club or something going on.

The sun came out!

 We walked to the Sakae shopping district and I felt a little like I was back in Europe.  There's all these shops, people walking, and it's decorated for Christmas.

Sakae shopping district

Sunday, we rode our bikes for the second time to church and set up our house for Christmas.  This involves a 3 foot Christmas tree, Advent wreath, and Nativity scene.  I like looking at the Nativity scene (without baby Jesus in it yet) and reflecting on waiting with Mary and Joseph for Jesus to come and save us

.  

Bicycling Adventures

November 26, 2014

                Once again, Adam and I have been quite adventurous.  We were planning to go to Yoro to hike up the mountain on Saturday.  So on Friday night, I showed Adam the plan for the next day, including the train schedule.  Adam decided to look up how far it really was to Yoro and seeing that it was only about 10km, we decided to bike to the mountain.   Earlier in the week, we had ordered bear spray on amazon japan (you can buy almost anything on there).  I spent part of Friday evening, reading the entire pamphlet that came with the spray.  This may or may not have been such a good idea as it made me more concerned about bears.  Now you may be asking yourself, “Do they really need to worry about bears in Japan?”  Well, a few weeks ago a bear killed an elderly gentleman in Takayama. All the hikers we came across had bear bells too.  Apparently (from what Adam read on the internet), the bears can be more aggressive because their habitat is endangered.  However, the main reason for the safety precaution was our bear run in a couple years ago in Waterton.  Since then, we’ve both been extra careful.

                Saturday morning, we have a nice big breakfast and leave our house by 8am.  We bike to Yoro which takes about an hour and it takes a bit longer to find our way to the park.  The bike ride was beautiful, and most places had a biking path so it was fairly safe.  On our way to the park, we decide that it’s only going to be uphill from here, so we park and lock our bikes and continue on foot.  Yoro park is really beautiful and even more so with the autumn colours.  Even in the park, we were working hard ascending the pathway to the waterfall.  The waterfall is pretty similar to the Fuwa falls here in Tarui, but much more developed so you can get really close to it.  There’s a story about these falls which have made them famous as a type of “fountain of youth” so they sell water from the falls and beer brewed locally.  We were going to try some of the beer, but the one place we asked were selling it for 570 yen for one bottle.  We figured that was too much.

Park leading up to Yoro Falls

Really pretty maple tree

I look tired already and we haven't even started the hike.

The falls

The story about the falls

              Back to the hike, we reached the falls and briefly enjoyed them before starting up Yoro Mountain.  Or at least we think it was Yoro Mountain, there’s three mountains that all have the same trail head, and so we tried to match up our kanji to the signs to choose the right path.  At around noon, we reached what we thought was the summit.  Exhausted and hungry (remember we had already been exercising fairly strenuously for 4 hours), we stopped on a bench to eat where we could see a little of the view from the mountain of the surrounding towns.  By our lunch spot was a sign that showed that something (written in Kanji) was 1.6 km away.  We figured that it must be the summit with a lookout.  So we decided to check it out.  I doubt that it was actually 1.6 km.  If it was, it was the longest 1.6 km I’ve walked.  They have little updates on your progress as you go along too, i.e. 400m back the way you came, 1.2 km ahead.  The path was the cruelest way to get to a summit, they had you climb up stairs, just to have you go back down.  Finally, we reached the 1.6km mark.

                What did we see?  Was it worth the grueling up and down? 

                We saw a junction with a sign that showed what was in three different directions.  The sign we had seen must have said something like: junction for other hiking trails/mountains 1.6 km ahead.  We sat down on a bench, disappointed.  We discussed the possibility of taking a different trail down the mountain, but as we were unsure of where that trail would spit us out, we decided it was best to just go back the arduous 1.6 km to where we had left off.  On our way back, we ran into a couple that we had passed on our way to the junction.  They stopped and tried to talk to us, which wasn’t very fruitful.  After continuing on our way, we figured that they must have done the same thing as us and been disappointed with the results.  The hike is fairly popular so we passed many other people, we still had our bear spray at hand though.

                The walk back down the mountain was faster and not nearly as exhausting.  By the end, we didn’t care to look any more at the autumn leaves as we both were tired.  We got on our bikes and headed home.  We arrived back at our house around 5pm, making that around 9 hours of exercise with maybe 30 minute break.  I felt like how I do after a day of skiing moggles times two.

The hike

          Sunday, we slept in and had a relaxing morning.  Seeing as we had biked to Yoro the day before, we thought, “Well, how far is it to Ogaki?  Maybe we could bike there.”  The Catholic church in Ogaki is only about 9km from us.  So, we decided to go on our bikes again to Mass.  It actually only took us 40 minutes to bike there (it took us 50 minutes on the way back as it was uphill).  Seeing as Ogaki is 7 minutes by train and then we have to walk half an hour from the station to get to church, biking is just as fast and we can leave when we want to, instead of following the train schedule.  This also saves us the train fare.  The bike ride is nice with a bike path the whole way along less busy highways.  I should mention that the weather this weekend was beautiful around 15 degrees and sunny every day. 

                Monday was a national holiday, so Adam and I, although physically exhausted, still wanted to go somewhere.  We decided to bike (again :P) to Ikeda.  Ikeda is only about 7km away.  It was uphill the whole way except for the last two kilometers where we went through a tunnel that was all downhill.  We came out of the tunnel and right away were at the onsen, which is where we were wanting to go.  Japanese onsens are very famous.  They’re hot springs and they have them all over the place.  A major difference between Canadian and Japanese hot springs is that in Japanese onsens you go in naked.  I should mention that the men and women baths are separate.  Although unsure about how we felt about this all, we decided to go for it.  We go into our separate change rooms and I look around to make sure that what I read was true- everyone does go in naked.  (I mean wouldn’t that be embarrassing if it was all a myth and you end up being the only naked person?)  So I follow suit and lock everything up in a locker.  I then go to the showering section.  I read that Japanese people wash very well before going into the baths.  They had big bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash there.  You sit on a little stool with a bucket and a shower head.  I took a peak around again to make sure I was doing this properly.  (Adam said the men didn’t wash as carefully.)  Finally, I was ready to go into the onsen.  The women’s was quite nice with an indoor pool, and several outdoor pools.  I was surprised at how small the pools were though.  The women had one main pool that was fairly shallow but nicely designed with rocks to sit on, a cooler pool for walking in, a shallow bath that two people can lie in, and a place to sit while two streams of water come down on your shoulders like a massage.  They also had these rocks imbedded in concrete that you could walk across, maybe this was supposed to work as a foot massage, but it mostly just hurt.  I tried everything except for the indoor pool.  For not liking hot tubs, I quite enjoyed the experience.  I think it helped that I didn’t know anyone and most of the women were old.  Some of the old women were chatting together like it was over tea.  One lady tried talking to me, but I just said that I don’t speak Japanese.  I didn’t want to try having a conversation in Japanese while being naked.  Coming out of the onsen, I showered off again and again when I got home.  Something about everyone being naked seems less sanitary.

                After the onsen, we had a picnic in a green area by the parking lot for the onsen which had a nice view of the mountains.  We had talked about trying to find the gorge in town, but were both just too tired.  The bike home was nice as after the 2km uphill tunnel, the rest was downhill, so we got to enjoy the “koyo” (fall colours).  I believe that we will remember this weekend as the one where we discovered that we can bike everywhere.

Outside the onsen

Parking lot for the onsen and the view
we had for our picnic of the mountains.

Our bike ride home from Ikeda.
Adam wanted to take this picture as he felt it really captures Japan:
bent sign, old building, and beautiful mountains.

                

                

Kyoto

We decided to go to Kyoto for a second time this past Saturday since we hoped to see more of the leaves changing colour.  One of the things to do in Japan is to go look at the leaves changing colour in the Fall (it's called "koyo") and to go look at the cherry blossoms in the Spring.

We disembarked from the train in Kyoto and set off to find the subway, after following one wrong path to the end we headed back the way we came and walked through this underground mall in Kyoto station.  All the stores are decorated for Christmas here now.  We found the subway and tried unsuccessfully to purchase a ticket.  After struggling, we turned to a person waiting to use the machine and she informed us that we needed to buy a one day ticket from a person at the counter and not from the machine.  After which we were on our way.  We didn't end up using the one day subway tickets as much as we planned, but we did get a discount with them at the castle which made up for it.
We started off the day by going to Nijo-jo Castle.  Along with getting a discount, we also got a free poster.  I accidentally pointed to the bigger one in a slight communication lapse which resulted in Adam having to carry the rolled up poster around with great care the entire day.  Unfortunately it started to rip throughout the day, nonetheless when it started to rain, he tucked it into his coat to keep the rain off.  With what care did he carry that poster!  Anyways, we really should have opened it earlier to see what the poster was, we just assumed it would be a nice picture of the castle.  Well, it turned out to have a picture of the castle gate with very large anime type people occupying the majority of the space.  We were a little disappointed.

So back to the castle.  You can't take any pictures inside the castle and lots of it is under repair/restoration.  This castle was cool since all the walls and roofs were painted.  It also had these "nightingale" floors that creek when you walk on them.  So any guests of the Shogun would be heard moving around.  (The Shogun was a warlord who had unified Japan.  The Shogunate was then passed down through the sons of the family.) I was surprised how loud the floors were and also how the "creeking" wasn't an annoying sound, it was more of a singing sound.  I guess the Shogun didn't spend very much time at this fancy castle though.

The Castle had quite nice gardens that we explored.  One of the trees in the grounds was a type of tree that survived the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (as you can read from the sign).  At first we thought it was this other tree and thought that it really had looked like a survivor.  :)  We ate our picnic lunch of falafel in pitas on a bench in the gardens.

 

The tree we thought has survived the atomic bomb.

The tree that actually survived the atomic bomb.

 After lunch, we headed out with our metro passes to the Cathedral in downtown Kyoto.  Leave it to us to visit a cathedral in a city covered in Buddhist Temples and Shinto Shrines.  After some prayer time we headed back out into the elements (it was a little windy and chilly) to find a bus to take us to Kinkaku-ji Temple (AKA the Golden Pavillion).  After successfully (in my mind) having asked a lady about a bus to said temple, we crossed the street and lo and behold as we were looking at all the bus stops a bus drove up that was going to the temple.  We boarded the bus and were lucky enough to get to sit down.

When I was researching places in Kyoto, the writers talked about how crowded Kyoto is everywhere and to try to go on days where it won't be as crowded.  The castle wasn't crowded at all, but the Golden Pavillion sure was.  Unfortunately, we tried to take pictures without showing the crowds and so they don't really do the experience justice.  We walked around enjoying the fall foliage and looking around when suddenly we found ourselves outside the temple enclosure.  This tourist site is smartly designed to get people moving in and out while following a one track route.  Luckily, we still had our tickets, so we just went back through the main gate again.  (It would've been hard going back up against the movement of the crowd the other way.)

The Golden Pavillion

Sunday, we were having Father Rey from the parish over for lunch/supper which ended up being more like brunch.  English Mass was at 2pm, and afterwards Father came with us to our home.  We ended up eating at around 4pm.  We made hash browns, chicken breakfast sausages, and pancakes.  So it was more like brunch.  We had a really nice visit and we got our house blessed which was wonderful.

My last blog post, I talked about how I'm improving my cooking skills, here's a couple photos.

Homemade falafel with homemade pita bread.

My first attempt at sushi (with cooked fish).

We have an elderly gentleman as a neighbour.  He brought us these persimmons to dry by hanging them on our window railing.  We have to wait a month before they're ready to eat.  I guess if you don't dry this kind of persimmon they taste awful.  Earlier, he brought us persimmons that we can just eat right away too.