I have an article about weddings and marriage in the Japan and a review of a cafe in the most recent issue of the Nagazasshi:
http://issuu.com/nagazasshi/docs/nagazasshi3.3
Monday, March 14, 2011
Earthquake/ Tsunami
Thanks everyone for the concern about Japan. Thankfully I am safe down here in Nagasaki and everyone I know in the Kanto region is also safe.
I want to donate blood, but unfortunately my trip to Malaysia may prevent me from being able to, due to concern of Malaria. We'll see, I haven't found out for sure yet.
I had a trip to Tokyo planned for the end of the month, but will probably postpone it until the summer now.
Let's continue to hope for the best for everyone up north!
I want to donate blood, but unfortunately my trip to Malaysia may prevent me from being able to, due to concern of Malaria. We'll see, I haven't found out for sure yet.
I had a trip to Tokyo planned for the end of the month, but will probably postpone it until the summer now.
Let's continue to hope for the best for everyone up north!
Monday, March 7, 2011
Wood Working
A few weeks ago my friend mentioned how he was going to go wood-working and invited me along. I really had no idea what to expect but was very pleasantly surprised before even arriving. To get to the shop you have to drive on tiny roads, navigate past several forks in the road in the middle of a forest. I had started to get worried, but low and behold, a clearing emerged. Nestled in a small gorge was a large pond and a monstrous shack. We were greeted by two barking dogs, one of which had multiple plant-forms dragging from her butt-fur. The scenery was beautiful.
The owner of this place is a man named Onizuka, who is apparently pretty well-known throughout the greater Nagasaki area. In short, he's awesome. He looks a little crazy with his curly, unkempt, wood-chip filled mass of hair, with a pencil behind one year and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. However, he's very friendly and knows his wood. Near the end of the day, he usually breaks out his guitar and starts wailing out some Gipsy Kings, in Spanish (well, it's supposed to be Spanish). He also played some American songs for us. When he was in high school, he was the singer in a band. Pretty cool.
The first time I went, I just made chopsticks out of Cherry tree wood. It took a lot longer than I expected and I got, then proceeded to burst, a blister in the process. I started with two very squared pieces of wood, about chopstick size. I used a small hand-plainer to get the general shape I wanted then a knife to smooth it out, and round the edges. Finally, I used wet leaves to sand it and make it "pika pika" or shiny. (If you're familiar with Pokemon, "pika pika" is the sounds Pikachu makes when he fires his lightning... apparently). The general rule with the sanding was, if you think you're done, keep going. The last step was to oil them and I was done.
I had such a good time, I went back out the next week and brought another friend along. This time I went for a bowl. I was expecting to make a much smaller bowl, but the wood I chose was much bigger and I couldn't waste it. Onizuka taking the chainsaw to my piece of wood (again Cherry tree), might be one of my best memories of Japan in general. Here was this crazy guy, who put my wood on the ground, stabilized it with his shoe-less foot, no safety goggles or gloves, only a cigarette in his mouth, sawing away while wood-chips filled his shoe- and all of this in a beautiful pond-side, mountain view. It was perfect.
I took a chisel and hammer to the slab of wood for a good 4 hours, and it felt like I barely made a dent. My wrist was sore from hammering, my fingers would not open easily from gripping the hammer for so long and my left thumb had been hammered a few too many times, but I still had a great time. I finished it up this last weekend and it looks pretty great. The bottom is especially nice because the wood pretty freshly cut (August....) so the outer part was still a little moist, so a much lighter color. The bottom of the bowl is a nice combination of new and heart wood, so it's very cool looking.
I can see myself going very often from now on. It's such a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
The owner of this place is a man named Onizuka, who is apparently pretty well-known throughout the greater Nagasaki area. In short, he's awesome. He looks a little crazy with his curly, unkempt, wood-chip filled mass of hair, with a pencil behind one year and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. However, he's very friendly and knows his wood. Near the end of the day, he usually breaks out his guitar and starts wailing out some Gipsy Kings, in Spanish (well, it's supposed to be Spanish). He also played some American songs for us. When he was in high school, he was the singer in a band. Pretty cool.
The first time I went, I just made chopsticks out of Cherry tree wood. It took a lot longer than I expected and I got, then proceeded to burst, a blister in the process. I started with two very squared pieces of wood, about chopstick size. I used a small hand-plainer to get the general shape I wanted then a knife to smooth it out, and round the edges. Finally, I used wet leaves to sand it and make it "pika pika" or shiny. (If you're familiar with Pokemon, "pika pika" is the sounds Pikachu makes when he fires his lightning... apparently). The general rule with the sanding was, if you think you're done, keep going. The last step was to oil them and I was done.
I had such a good time, I went back out the next week and brought another friend along. This time I went for a bowl. I was expecting to make a much smaller bowl, but the wood I chose was much bigger and I couldn't waste it. Onizuka taking the chainsaw to my piece of wood (again Cherry tree), might be one of my best memories of Japan in general. Here was this crazy guy, who put my wood on the ground, stabilized it with his shoe-less foot, no safety goggles or gloves, only a cigarette in his mouth, sawing away while wood-chips filled his shoe- and all of this in a beautiful pond-side, mountain view. It was perfect.
I took a chisel and hammer to the slab of wood for a good 4 hours, and it felt like I barely made a dent. My wrist was sore from hammering, my fingers would not open easily from gripping the hammer for so long and my left thumb had been hammered a few too many times, but I still had a great time. I finished it up this last weekend and it looks pretty great. The bottom is especially nice because the wood pretty freshly cut (August....) so the outer part was still a little moist, so a much lighter color. The bottom of the bowl is a nice combination of new and heart wood, so it's very cool looking.
I can see myself going very often from now on. It's such a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Straight Permed!
Yesterday, I had a day off school (Nations Founder's Day, celebrating when the first emperor was crowned in 660 BC), and spontaneously decided to do what should have been done years ago, I got a straight perm. Man, it's awesome.
The process (perm plus cut) took a mere 5 and half hours. It started out with a shampoo and then my hair being plastered down with think gunk. It made it lay so flat, my hair looked about 3 inches longer than I thought it was. Then my hair was covered with plastic wrap and I sat under a heating (?) machine that resembled some kind of alien mind reading device. It wasn't the normal one I imagine when I think of perms, it had moving parts. When my hair was done cooking, I got another shampoo, then a dry and flat iron. I thought I was almost done, so I was a little worried when my hair looked almost as puffy as usual. But after the very very meticulous flat ironing, I received another helping of gunk in my hair, another brain melting and another wash. After another hair drying, my hair was so straight! It was weird seeing my hair wet and straight, since usually it's really curly when it's wet. So that was about 4 hours.
Then my hair cut, which started out with another shampoo. Now, when I go to get a haircut, getting my hair washed is my favorite part. There's just something about it that I enjoy, and that was before I got my hair washed in Japan. I got a blanket for my legs, a small cloth over my face, a warm towel for under my neck and nice scalp message. It was great! While I didn't get the message and warm towel all 5 times my hair was washed yesterday, twice was fine with me.
They guy who cut my hair studied in Tokyo and was really creative with his scissors, it was fun to watch him work. When the hair cut was finished I got my fifth washing and a final blow dry. Man, am I pleased. 5.5 hours later, I walked out looking like a new girl!
I suppose you want to see the finished product... (next morning)
The process (perm plus cut) took a mere 5 and half hours. It started out with a shampoo and then my hair being plastered down with think gunk. It made it lay so flat, my hair looked about 3 inches longer than I thought it was. Then my hair was covered with plastic wrap and I sat under a heating (?) machine that resembled some kind of alien mind reading device. It wasn't the normal one I imagine when I think of perms, it had moving parts. When my hair was done cooking, I got another shampoo, then a dry and flat iron. I thought I was almost done, so I was a little worried when my hair looked almost as puffy as usual. But after the very very meticulous flat ironing, I received another helping of gunk in my hair, another brain melting and another wash. After another hair drying, my hair was so straight! It was weird seeing my hair wet and straight, since usually it's really curly when it's wet. So that was about 4 hours.
Then my hair cut, which started out with another shampoo. Now, when I go to get a haircut, getting my hair washed is my favorite part. There's just something about it that I enjoy, and that was before I got my hair washed in Japan. I got a blanket for my legs, a small cloth over my face, a warm towel for under my neck and nice scalp message. It was great! While I didn't get the message and warm towel all 5 times my hair was washed yesterday, twice was fine with me.
They guy who cut my hair studied in Tokyo and was really creative with his scissors, it was fun to watch him work. When the hair cut was finished I got my fifth washing and a final blow dry. Man, am I pleased. 5.5 hours later, I walked out looking like a new girl!
I suppose you want to see the finished product... (next morning)
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
SNOW!
This photo was taken on Jan 31st. I can't really describe how excited I was when I opened my door to walk to school and saw the snow on the ground. I was smiling all the way to school, hoping that it would stay until lunch time when I could play in it outside. Unfortunately, it was gone by around 10.
Exactly a week later, it was warm, humid and felt like spring. Weird.
Hokkaido Snow Festival
Last weekend I journeyed to Hokkaido for the annual Sapporo Snow Festival. I got an insider tip that if you go the week before the festival actually starts, you get to see the famous snow and ice sculptures being made, with the added benefit of flights and hotels being mu
ch cheaper (and they really were).
So I headed out for my four day weekend on Thursday and was giddy with excitement at the all the snow. On the train from the airport, I didn't want anything more than to dive into the vast fields of meter high snow. While walking around downtown Sapporo, I was having the time of my life just stepping into the snow or giving it a little kick. It was awesome. The first evening I strolled through the park with the sculptures, to see what was going on...
The next day starred out great, as I headed out early to play in the snow in the parking lot.
I made a snowman. Then my friends and I wandered around a middle-of-nowhere suburb of northern Sapporo, in search of a place we could make butter, and the entrance to a park that supposedly had more snow sculptures. Apparently, all but one of the entrances to the farm were closed and by the time we figured that out, we'd gone to far and were over it, so we trudged to the park. It was warm this day and the snow was melting, which didn't go over well with my cheap, definitely not waterproof (but worked well enough in the snow) boots. While we didn't find any snow sculptures in the park, we did go cross country skiing... I don't know what percent of the time I spent actually on the skis, and not flayed out on the snow after falling. Maybe I wasn't THAT bad, especially for being on skis for the first time ever. It was a lot of fun though!
While Friday didn't work out as planned, Saturday was most productive. We ate fresh sashima at the fish market, visited the Sapporo brewery museum (not as cool as I'd hoped), went by the sculptures again to see how they've progressed (many were finished) and headed out to a nearby town called Otaru. Here we visited a very strange German microbrewery, where the Japanese staff walked around in very ugly German dresses and funny folk music played in the background. Our trip to Otaru was really focused on the candle-sno
w displays. There were three of four walks in the city, each path lined with various small snow creations, lit with a candle. It was really nice. The canal also had some floating candles.
The site-seeing was great enough, but one the best parts of the trip was the local specialty foods. Oh man, the food. Let me show you,
Lamb barbecue, known as Genghis Khan (pronounced Jenghis)- came with a nice roasted garlic dipping sauce
Fresh crab, ikura, and uni (sea urchin) from the fish market
Gelato- Lavender (purple) and Salt (light green). Delicious alone, even better mixed together.
Soup Curry- I was hesitant at first, but I've been craving this from the minute I finished it. It's curry based soup with lots of vegetables, potatoes and I had gyoza in mine. So good!
Butter Corn Ramen- Hokkaido special, awesome.
ch cheaper (and they really were).
So I headed out for my four day weekend on Thursday and was giddy with excitement at the all the snow. On the train from the airport, I didn't want anything more than to dive into the vast fields of meter high snow. While walking around downtown Sapporo, I was having the time of my life just stepping into the snow or giving it a little kick. It was awesome. The first evening I strolled through the park with the sculptures, to see what was going on...
The next day starred out great, as I headed out early to play in the snow in the parking lot.
I made a snowman. Then my friends and I wandered around a middle-of-nowhere suburb of northern Sapporo, in search of a place we could make butter, and the entrance to a park that supposedly had more snow sculptures. Apparently, all but one of the entrances to the farm were closed and by the time we figured that out, we'd gone to far and were over it, so we trudged to the park. It was warm this day and the snow was melting, which didn't go over well with my cheap, definitely not waterproof (but worked well enough in the snow) boots. While we didn't find any snow sculptures in the park, we did go cross country skiing... I don't know what percent of the time I spent actually on the skis, and not flayed out on the snow after falling. Maybe I wasn't THAT bad, especially for being on skis for the first time ever. It was a lot of fun though!While Friday didn't work out as planned, Saturday was most productive. We ate fresh sashima at the fish market, visited the Sapporo brewery museum (not as cool as I'd hoped), went by the sculptures again to see how they've progressed (many were finished) and headed out to a nearby town called Otaru. Here we visited a very strange German microbrewery, where the Japanese staff walked around in very ugly German dresses and funny folk music played in the background. Our trip to Otaru was really focused on the candle-sno
w displays. There were three of four walks in the city, each path lined with various small snow creations, lit with a candle. It was really nice. The canal also had some floating candles.The site-seeing was great enough, but one the best parts of the trip was the local specialty foods. Oh man, the food. Let me show you,
Lamb barbecue, known as Genghis Khan (pronounced Jenghis)- came with a nice roasted garlic dipping sauce
Fresh crab, ikura, and uni (sea urchin) from the fish market
Gelato- Lavender (purple) and Salt (light green). Delicious alone, even better mixed together.
Soup Curry- I was hesitant at first, but I've been craving this from the minute I finished it. It's curry based soup with lots of vegetables, potatoes and I had gyoza in mine. So good!
Butter Corn Ramen- Hokkaido special, awesome.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Malaysia
I recently returned from my two week adventure in Malaysia and I'm happy to report that it was 100% fun.
The first leg of our trip (flight 1 of 10), took me to Shanghai for a 5 hour layover. That airport had to be the biggest airport I've ever been to. Looking out the window at only one half of the airport, I could barely see some of the planes stationed on the tarmac on the horizon. I'm pretty sure it has to be bigger than some small cities.
The first big activity on the peninsula was Taman Negara national park, which is said to be the oldest rain forest in the world. While we got to walk across the longest rope bridge in the world, it wasn't quite as cool as I expected. I naively imagined a rickety, broken-down, Indiana Jones style bridge. It was quite different than that with netting and several treetop platforms separating segments of the bridge, but fun nonetheless. A cool part I didn't expect was staircase along the way, it was probably the scariest part, but I still felt very safe.
In this park we also got to see one the native tribes of Malaysia (although, this one at least, originated from Papua New Guinea) in their temporary village. This particular tribe is the only one allowed to live in the national park and they are nomadic so they move every few months. They hunt for their food with blow darts, which we learned how to make and got to shoot. My first attempt failed miserably, but on my second try I at least made it to the target.
Unfortunately, due to the large number of loud obnoxious people, we weren't able to see any animals in this park except a huge monitor lizard on a small beach (I was the first in our boat to spot it!)
The lack of animals at the first park was made up for at our next destination. We went to Borneo, which is the third largest island in the world. Ownership of the island is divided between Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. We only went to the Malaysian part. On a 3 day, 2 night jungle tour, we stayed in a really nice lodge with delicious food. But most importantly we saw all kinds of animals. On our boat cruises along the Kinabatangan River, we saw Orang Utan (which I learned is Malaysian: Orang means "man" and Utan means "forest", aka Man of the Forest), Proboscis monkeys (which only live on Borneo), lion tailed macaques, short tailed macaques, pig tailed macaques, red langer and silver langer monkeys.
We also saw 4 kinds of horn bill, kingfishers and some hawks. At first, it was really hard to spot any of the animals that the guides would point out, but after awhile we got the hang of it and could spot the animals in the trees quickly. On a jungle trek we saw several all kinds of bugs including huge millipedes, spiders and leeches. I also saw (or failed to see) my fair share of mosquitoes, at the most I had about 50 bites!
We spent one day hiking around Mt. Kinabalu, which is the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. It would have been fun to hike to the summit, but we had to settle for a 3 or 4 mile hike around the mountain. That night was freezing! At least compared to the mid80s of every other night and day of the trip. Since we were at a pretty high elevation, it was much cooler and I was not expecting it!
With the nature portion of the trip over, we spent a few days in the up and coming Kuala Lumpur. The city was really nice, with awesome architecture. There were new buildings being built everywhere. While it was true pretty much everywhere, it was a nice surprise to learn that about 90% of people in the city spoke English too, as a second or third language at that.
We celebrated the New Year in Kuala Lumpur. There were a few concerts being put on in different parts of the city and at midnight fireworks were lit in the middle of the street. It was a lot of fun.
The final leg of our trip was in Langkawi, a northeastern island of Malaysia. It's pretty much a resort/ tourist island. We spent a couple of days on rented scooters exploring the island and finding beautiful, deserted beaches. The sand was white, the water was warm and the sun was strong. It was pretty perfect. We would occasionally stop at roadside stands and get fresh fruit and coconut milk. Couldn't have asked for a better ending to a great trip. Despite being monsoon season, we only got rained on once or twice. Pretty perfect all around.
The only bad part about the trip was having to come home to cold, snowy weather!
And since I bet you miss my face, here's an oh so flattering picture of me eating Durian, the really smelly, really slimy/sticky tropical fruit.
For more photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57928534@N07/sets/72157625634752607/
The first leg of our trip (flight 1 of 10), took me to Shanghai for a 5 hour layover. That airport had to be the biggest airport I've ever been to. Looking out the window at only one half of the airport, I could barely see some of the planes stationed on the tarmac on the horizon. I'm pretty sure it has to be bigger than some small cities.
The first big activity on the peninsula was Taman Negara national park, which is said to be the oldest rain forest in the world. While we got to walk across the longest rope bridge in the world, it wasn't quite as cool as I expected. I naively imagined a rickety, broken-down, Indiana Jones style bridge. It was quite different than that with netting and several treetop platforms separating segments of the bridge, but fun nonetheless. A cool part I didn't expect was staircase along the way, it was probably the scariest part, but I still felt very safe.
In this park we also got to see one the native tribes of Malaysia (although, this one at least, originated from Papua New Guinea) in their temporary village. This particular tribe is the only one allowed to live in the national park and they are nomadic so they move every few months. They hunt for their food with blow darts, which we learned how to make and got to shoot. My first attempt failed miserably, but on my second try I at least made it to the target.
Unfortunately, due to the large number of loud obnoxious people, we weren't able to see any animals in this park except a huge monitor lizard on a small beach (I was the first in our boat to spot it!)The lack of animals at the first park was made up for at our next destination. We went to Borneo, which is the third largest island in the world. Ownership of the island is divided between Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. We only went to the Malaysian part. On a 3 day, 2 night jungle tour, we stayed in a really nice lodge with delicious food. But most importantly we saw all kinds of animals. On our boat cruises along the Kinabatangan River, we saw Orang Utan (which I learned is Malaysian: Orang means "man" and Utan means "forest", aka Man of the Forest), Proboscis monkeys (which only live on Borneo), lion tailed macaques, short tailed macaques, pig tailed macaques, red langer and silver langer monkeys.
We also saw 4 kinds of horn bill, kingfishers and some hawks. At first, it was really hard to spot any of the animals that the guides would point out, but after awhile we got the hang of it and could spot the animals in the trees quickly. On a jungle trek we saw several all kinds of bugs including huge millipedes, spiders and leeches. I also saw (or failed to see) my fair share of mosquitoes, at the most I had about 50 bites!We spent one day hiking around Mt. Kinabalu, which is the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. It would have been fun to hike to the summit, but we had to settle for a 3 or 4 mile hike around the mountain. That night was freezing! At least compared to the mid80s of every other night and day of the trip. Since we were at a pretty high elevation, it was much cooler and I was not expecting it!
With the nature portion of the trip over, we spent a few days in the up and coming Kuala Lumpur. The city was really nice, with awesome architecture. There were new buildings being built everywhere. While it was true pretty much everywhere, it was a nice surprise to learn that about 90% of people in the city spoke English too, as a second or third language at that.
We celebrated the New Year in Kuala Lumpur. There were a few concerts being put on in different parts of the city and at midnight fireworks were lit in the middle of the street. It was a lot of fun.
The final leg of our trip was in Langkawi, a northeastern island of Malaysia. It's pretty much a resort/ tourist island. We spent a couple of days on rented scooters exploring the island and finding beautiful, deserted beaches. The sand was white, the water was warm and the sun was strong. It was pretty perfect. We would occasionally stop at roadside stands and get fresh fruit and coconut milk. Couldn't have asked for a better ending to a great trip. Despite being monsoon season, we only got rained on once or twice. Pretty perfect all around.
The only bad part about the trip was having to come home to cold, snowy weather!
And since I bet you miss my face, here's an oh so flattering picture of me eating Durian, the really smelly, really slimy/sticky tropical fruit.For more photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57928534@N07/sets/72157625634752607/
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