Week 12: Eat Jellyfish

Sometimes, I plan these new things weeks in advance, but other times, they just sneak up on me. Sometimes, in fact, I don’t even know I’ve done something new until after I’ve done it. This was one of those cases. Read it and weep.

I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this, but I am a vegetarian. I don’t eat fish, seafood, pork, beef, chicken, or anything else that used to be an animal. Normally, I don’t have to explain what “vegetarian” means, but since I live in Japan, I know that I can’t take anything for granted. This was made particularly evident when I went to my first enkai, or work party.

An accurate representation of my stomach

The week leading up to the enkai, I had told everyone that I didn’t eat all of these things. I was willing to make concessions and eat seafood, because I realized that if I didn’t, the chefs probably wouldn’t know what to feed me. Satou-sensei got excited and started making calls. The days passed by uneventfully, and suddenly the fateful day of the enkai arrived.

My supervisor and I drove to the resort where the enkai was held, and seated ourselves in the big room. Speeches were made, the kampai was given, and the waitresses started bringing plates of food out. So many different things, and I didn’t know what any of them were. They brought out a few things for me, and I looked at the communal plates after finishing my own food, and asked Nakayama-sensei if there was anything I could eat.

“Yes!” she replied. “these are kikurage! It is a type of mushroom!”

Kikurage. Or what I thought I ate.

“Oh, okay!” I said, taking a few and putting them onto my plate. I put a few bites into my mouth, chewed and swallowed. Well, it seemed she was right. It did kind of taste like mushrooms, albeit slightly strange mushrooms.

The party went on, and I was continually served a number of different dishes, including crab, shrimp, and many other salads. I guess that since I said I’d eat seafood, they really took that to heart. All was well, until about 30 minutes later, when people had had a bit more to drink, that the subject of food once again reared its ugly head.

“How are you finding the food, Jeri? Are there things you can eat?” the (actual) PE teacher asked.

“Yeah, it’s been great! Nakayama-sensei pointed out that I can eat the kikurage here!” I replied, pointing at the mushrooms.

The room went silent and everyone at my table looked at each other uncomfortably.

“Uhh...” the PE teacher started. “That’s not kikurage. That’s kurage.”

Nakayama-sensei looked at me in horror.

“Nakayama-sensei, what is kurage?” I asked, fearing the worst.

“Jellyfish.” she said, obviously terrified.

Jellyfish. What I actually ate.

I started to laugh hysterically. I had just eaten jellyfish! Nakayama-sensei looked at me as though she had killed my child by accident, apologising profusely. “I am so sorry! So so so sorry!” she kept repeating over and over.

“Seriously, don’t worry about it.” I said. “These things happen.”

And then all was right with the world. And I didn’t touch the jellyfish again. 

What jellyfish looks like cooked.

I would never have eaten jellyfish on purpose, but you know what? I’m glad I did it. It was an experience I will certainly always remember, even if not for the best of reasons.

Have you eaten jellyfish? What’s the craziest thing you’ve eaten? Let me know!

Week 11: Internet Free Sundays

9:33 am- I just rolled off Karin’s spare futon, and got up slowly and groggily. I helped myself to a glass of water. I cursed my hangover and my lack of foresight from the night before. I reached for my phone to check my email and Facebook.

Oh, wait, damn. Can’t do that. No internet today. I wrote this instead.

10:00 am- We’re all packed up in Jessica’s car, ready to head back to Iwamizawa for her church after the Higashikawa Easter event. I had a lot of fun. Too much fun, one might say. I don’t regret it. I am, however, wondering how I am going to amuse myself during the drive with no internet on my phone.

10:07 am- I can’t find my ipod. We have to go back, Jack!

10:13 am- oops, it was in a hidden pocket in my jacket all along. Sorry for making you late, Jessica! I know you have a 3 hour drive ahead of you and your church has already started and you want to be there by noon.

10:25 am- I wonder if any embarrassing photos from last night have surfaced on the internet yet. I should check. Oh wait...

10:35 am- maybe I will just take a nap. Leave the driving and k-pop to Jessica. Yes, that sounds like a good idea.

11:46 am- I wonder how close to Iwamizawa we are.

11:47 am- wow, only that far away? How did we get here that quickly?

11:48 am- Jessica, how fast are you going?

11:49 am- maybe I should just go back to sleep until we get there. Yes, that is a good idea.

12:05 pm- oh look, we’ve arrived at the LDS church in Iwamizawa.

12:07 pm- Jess left me the car keys so I can hang while she gets all holy or whatever she does in church. What should I do? No internet. No internet. No internet.

12:10 pm- I have no clue what to do. Maybe I will go for a walk, get some fresh air. And coffee. Lots of coffee. And water. Why does my head still hurt?

12:40 pm- That walk was lovely. This coffee is delicious. I can’t get over the fact that I’m wearing a sun dress without tights and my legs aren’t cold! Summer is coming! Summer is coming! I should tweet about this! Oh, wait...

12:45 pm- trying to play guitar in the back seat of a car is more difficult than I had anticipated. Maybe I will just put it away, and wait.

12:48 pm- this is boring.

1:00 pm- okay, where are Jess and Andromeda? Church ended a whole second ago!

1:10 pm- still not here.

1:15 pm- nope.

1:20 pm- oh look there they are! And they are bringing the elders with them! Yay! I get to meet them hung-over in my indecent sundress! Quick, I’d better zip it up!

1:30 pm- well that was fun. I think I made an okay impression!

2:00 pm- I’m finally home sweet home! No time to get to the cello concert, though. What should I do instead? Stream a show? Nope, can’t. Watch a movie online? Nope. Check facebook? Nope. Check my email? Nope. Hmm... I could read!

2:01 pm- my e-book is dead. Maybe I will take a shower!

2:15 pm- that was nice. Now what?

2:30 pm- ooh I’ll watch these DVDs I have had for ages and haven’t watched cuz I’ve had the internet!

4:24 pm- Totoro is strange.

4:26 pm- Dinner time! What should I make? I am lazy. Lazy lazy. Edamame from the freezer it is for now!

4:30 pm- maybe I’ll write in my journal a bit.

5:16 pm- that was nice :)

5:34 pm- ooh I’ll continue the DVDing with this rare and unseen footage Bowie DVD I have. Yes. So much yes.

5:45 pm- man David Bowie smokes a lot.

5:51 pm- he also acts a little bit like a giant asshole.

6:35 pm- right, now that I know more about Bowie than I ever needed to, what now? Ooh I still have Pleasantville on my computer!

7:35 pm- this movie is weird. Also I am super sleepy.

And that is the last thing I wrote before I fell asleep.

All in all, I think the internet-free day was a good idea! I think I will continue to adopt it every Sunday. It made me more productive, I did things I wouldn’t have done otherwise, like finally watching those films. I could get used to it.

Have you ever gone without internet or anything? Let me know :D

Week 10: Get a Pixie Cut

I love playing with my hair. It has been long, short, medium length. It’s been curly and straight. It’s been blonde, brown, black, and red. There are few things I wouldn’t do to my head, just to wonder if it would look good, and the few things I wouldn’t do are only because I have a job where I need fairly conservative hair.

black.

blonde.

red.

I also get bored easily, and when my hair has been one style for too long, I start to get antsy. I comb through websites with photos of different hairstyles, asking my friends how they’d look on me.

“No,” I think. “I need to grow my hair out. It needs to happen. I want long, beautiful flowing locks a la Zooey Deschanel.” And then I go against my thoughts and lumber down to the salon to chop it all off.

look. at. that. hair.

That is what happened a few weeks ago, when I decided rather suddenly to get the pixie cut I’d always dreamed of having, but stopped just short of achieving. I had cut my hair short before, but never Emma Watson short. And that is what I wanted.

the before photo. right after my last haircut.

I called up Jessica, eager to get her recommendation for a place to go. She had had her haircut in Japan twice, and always ended up looking super cute. Because of this, I went for a run to her place, and then we drove down to the salon together. As it turned out, I had been to karaoke on my birthday with my hairdresser! While her English was non-existent, she was super nice, and more importantly, very talented with a pair of scissors.

We talked back and forth in broken Japanese, and she asked how much I wanted taken off. I showed her the photo that I’d brought with me, and I swear, her eyes almost popped out of their sockets. “Really?!” she asked in Japanese. “So short!”

the photo i brought in.

“Yes, I know. Get rid of it.” I replied in my amazing flawless Japanese.

And so she did. And I ended up looking like this:

I know you have all probably seen pictures of my hair by now and you’ve told me what you thought, but if this is new to you, what do you think? Should I stick with long hair or short? Have you ever done anything crazy to your hair? Let me know!

Week 9: Go to a Chocolate Factory

I’m not sure if you are aware of this, but inside Sapporo, Japan’s fifth largest city, there exists a place called Shiroi Koibito Park. I’m not religious, so I may be a little confused on this front, but I am pretty sure it is heaven.

Why, you may ask? Because the park is composed of a giant chocolate factory and its grounds. You can tour the chocolate factory where they make Sapporo’s famous cookies, try making the cookies yourself, feast on some delicious chocolate in the tearoom, and run around the park for hours!

And that is exactly what I did one day. Armed with an empty stomach and a sense of adventure, I braved the cold Hokkaido winds and the Sapporo metro system to find my way to this little piece of paradise. And Cian came with me.

When I got there, I was instantly struck by how big the building was. I figured since I was in Japan and everything in here was tiny, the building would be as well. I was wrong. The grounds span for more than a kilometre, and the red-brick building instantly dwarfs everything around it. We walked up and into what we thought was the front entrance, eager to get out of the wind.

As it turns out, the entrance we walked into was not the actual entrance, so after some broken Japanese exchanged with the nice ladies at the souvenir shop, we walked out and into the actual entrance, where we purchased our tour guides, received a ‘chocolate passport’ and headed on our way. We were supposed to follow the prints on the ground as we went through the factory tour.

The first thing we saw was a lot of old chocolate related memorabilia. It was like being in a chocolate museum, but without any English to explain the artifacts, I was content to make up my own stories.

After this, we went up through the factory itself, where we watched factory workers and learned how the precious Shiroi Koibito cookies are made. From what I can tell, the chocolate is made, then melted, then cooled into sheets, then cut, then placed between cookies that underwent the same process. Everything is then packaged, and regular taste/quality inspections are conducted. It was all very interesting, but it was hard to get over the awkward Engrish on the factory signs. 

From there, we went to the tea room, where we could look out the window and see the grounds and the city. I ordered the liquid chocolate and was promptly served some of the best hot chocolate that I have had in my life. Seriously, I think it was only surpassed by one cup I had in Argentina when I was 14 and maybe the hot chocolate at Juliette et Chocolat. I don’t think I will ever get over the tastiness. 

After this, we wandered back down and ended up in a room filled with gramaphones. Why? I don’t know.

After THAT, we wandered a bit more, and ended up in a room full to the brim with old toys. WHY? I still don’t know.

Then, we braved the cold again and went back downtown.

All in all, I’d say it was a wonderful experience. I love chocolate, so any chance to get close to it is good for me. If you’re in Sapporo and have the time, I would definitely recommend that you check it out, because why not?

Week 8: Watch the Sun Set Over the Ocean

I have probably done this before, but I was really running out of ideas this week, so it seemed like as good an idea as any. It really doesn’t require much of a backstory, so without further ado, here is a picture of the sunset:

Disclaimer: this is not actually the sunset I saw, although it looked something like this. I was lame and forgot to snap a picture. Sorry guys.

Week 7: Postcrossing

This post is going to be a short one. I know, I know, I’m ridiculously behind. I’m still writing about posts from mid March, when we’re nearing the end of April. But that’s why this one is going to be short. If I make them all slightly shorter, especially the ones that aren’t really worth writing 3 pages of text about. So here it goes.

Once upon a time I realized that I liked getting postcards. Like, a lot.  So much, in fact, that I would scour stores for postcards whenever I travelled anywhere in the hopes that if I sent it to one of my friends, they would be nice enough to send a postcard back.

Through this method, my postcard collection slowly grew larger and larger over the last year or so. This is what it looked like when I first started decorating my apartment in Kuriyama:

And this is what it looks like now:

This, however, is hardly something new. Big deal, right?

No, the new thing is my discovery of the coolest website in recent history, www.postcrossing.com. On this website, you sign up for a profile and you are given random addresses and names of people who would like to receive real life postcards from you. In return, once they have registered a postcard you’ve sent them, your address is put out there, and you will receive one from someone random in return.

The idea is simple and brilliant. You can track where your postcards go, where they are from, and even do direct swaps via the site. It is all very exciting. So with that in mind, I figured my new thing of the week would be to send and receive postcards to and from COMPLETE STRANGERS.

So I did. And it was awesome.

I made an account, wrote a little blurb about myself, then asked for 5 addresses to send postcards to. I ended up with explicit instructions to send 2 postcards to Russia, 1 to Belarus, 1 to Poland and 1 to Germany. I wrote out my postcards, super excited, and went to the post office to mail them.

The lady at the post office seemed a little confused as to why I was sending these postcards to all these crazy places, but since I visit the Kuriyama post office at least once a week to send things to strange places, I think she was used to me by now. I just walked in, and she said “Canada ni okuru?” (do you want to send this to Canada?)


I was like “Nope! ALL OF THESE CRAZY PLACE INSTEAD!” and her mind was blown.

After I sent the 5 postcards, I waited and waited. So far, I have only gotten one postcard back, but I’m hoping to get more soon. I got this one from a lovely girl in China! Isn’t it cute?

Later on today, I’m going to head to the post office to send some more postcards. I’m looking forward to hearing that they’ve been received and hopefully getting more in return! I think this is one adventure I’m going to be sticking with!

If anyone is interested in postcrossing, let me know! Also if anyone would like a postcard or to send me one, also let me know!


Update: Just got home. Received a lovely postcard from Moscow in the mail! Check it out!

Week 6: Stay in a Japanese Hotel

We Play Songs We Like are awesome. So awesome, in fact, that we decided that we needed to reward our awesomeness with a weekend away. An awesome weekend away.

A few weeks beforehand, I had been idly researching things to do in Hokkaido, when I came across a small onsen town called Jozankei, nestled snug in the mountains just south of Sapporo. It was beautiful, tiny, and it gave me the opportunity to get naked and sit in hot water looking at the stars. I was immediately interested.

I called up Jess and Tracy, asking if they would be interested in heading down for a night or two for a girls weekend. They said yes, and it just so happened that the only night we were all free was the weekend after the HAJET show, so we decided to make it a CELEBRATION!

I researched hotels and booked us in a Japanese room at the Jozankei View Hotel. It seemed to be one of the biggest hotels, but it was reasonably cheap (7000 yen for the night, including both breakfast and dinner buffets and entrance to the onsen on the top floor). Oh, and did I mention that our hotel HAD A WATER PARK IN THE BASEMENT? No? Well, our hotel had a water park in the basement!

So one fine Friday afternoon, we got off work early, picked up our bags and set out on a road trip to remember. I had decided not to bring my smartphone with me so I could be fully immersed in the moment and get away from my addiction to technology for a bit. This was much to the annoyance of Jessica, who had been counting on using my GPS to get there.

“Don’t worry!” I said confidently, “We’ll totally be able to get there following these instructions i haphazardly wrote down on a little piece of pink paper without any maps or anything!”

Jessica was not convinced, but I was bound, set and determined, so we hopped in the car GPS-less to pick up Tracy.

“Okay, don’t worry, I know the turn is here somewhere... Have we gone 4.52 kilometres yet?!” I asked, my own judgement starting to falter as we got to the outskirts of Sapporo.

“I don’t know, you were supposed to have this covered! I think we have!” Jessica said, starting to get testy. Getting lost in city traffic is not her favourite pastime, and I can’t say I blame her. Seriously Jess, thanks for putting up with my crazy. :D

Eventually, after I finally got us back on track, which I am quite proud of myself for, we ended up at Jozankei. It’s a tiny tiny town with only one main road, so even without a map, it wasn’t hard to figure out which hotel was ours. It was the giant-ass hotel at the end of the road, smack in the middle of the town.

The town itself was absolutely gorgeous, cradled in snow-capped mountains and trees, with nothing to spoil the sight whatsoever. Even the big hotel didn’t seem to look out of place, it converged with the nature somewhat.

Anyway, so we checked in and brought all our stuff up to our rooms, where we were confronted with the beautiful sight of a traditional Japanese room.

As I mentioned that this was the one new thing I did all week, I will focus on it for a bit. Japanese hotel rooms are slightly different than normal hotel rooms. They are almost always tatami rooms, and they do not have beds. Instead, there is just a small table and a place for tea, where you sit seiza and drink your tea and do other Japanese things (I don’t presume to know what Japanese people do in the comfort of their own hotel rooms). Later on, the hotel/ryokan employees come in and lay out your futon for you so you return after dinner to your room all set up for sleep. These are on the floor, and they are harder than hotel beds normally are (obviously), but they are still quite comfortable. 

So yes. We set our stuff down, and then immediately changed into our bathing suits to head downstairs to go to the WATER PARK IN THE BASEMENT. Yes. That necessitates caps lock. Every single time.

The water park was relatively unexciting as far as water parks go, but we were so happy because it was free and it was A WATER PARK IN THE BASEMENT. We spent our time switching between hot and cold pools, waiting for the wave pool to turn on, going down the tiny water slides, and watching young Japanese guys do flips off the pool, trying to impress us. We even gave them scores. They were super amused. I think. I don’t think their girlfriends were though.

After that, we went upstairs clad in our wonderful hotel yukatas, and changed out of our bathing suits in time to go to the buffet dinner. It was varied, but surprisingly delicious. The ballroom was giant, like something out of a film. I felt like it was way too classy for the people in it, who were mostly Japanese families clad only in their robes.

“See?” Jessica said to me as we got our food, “I told you it was okay to wear your yukata to dinner!”


So I was wrong. Oh well. We made up for it by having a lovely meal, then returning to our rooms to get ready to go to the one main attraction of the hotel, the rooftop onsen. We put our yukatas back on and walked to the gorgeously decorated elevators, taking them all the way to the top floor. 

We undressed, and all of a sudden we were soaking our body in 45 degree water, looking out on the night scene of Jozankei through full glass windows. I’m sure it would have been more stunning during the day, because all we could see were a few lights, but it was pretty nonetheless. As it turned out, it was the girls turn to use the rooftop pool, so we went up and out, and got to see the stars in a way I never had before. It was definitely an experience to remember.

After THAT (I know, right could it possibly get any better?), we wanted to sing karaoke in our yukatas, but the only karaoke bar in the hotel had mandatory nomihoudai, so since we weren’t willing to fork up 4,000 yen, we passed.

Instead, we came across the tiny arcade in the hotel (seriously, this place was gigantic), so we took some purikura photos instead. I’m trying to figure out how to scan them, but I’m having trouble so I might just take a picture of them instead. Trust me, they were adorable.

Photos in hand, we went back up to our hotel room, bought beer from a vending machine and proceeded to serenade ourselves with Tracy’s guitar and give each other massages on our futons. Sexy times, I tell you.

We fell asleep content and woke up in time for the morning breakfast buffet, which was similar to the evening buffet except it had a few more breakfast foods and it wasn’t dark outside. We then checked out of our hotel, and spent some time enjoying the town. We soaked our feet in a natural foot bath, found a frozen waterfall, and slid down a hill on our butts and lived to tell the tale.

We drove back the next day with our hearts content and our minds full of fond memories. If you ever have the chance to go to Jozankei, I highly recommend it. The place was fairly cheap, and really well-located. We definitely got our money’s worth. :D