blue Stuff

    

Lately I've been trying to figure out what is the best food to eat in Japan. Right now I have to say my favorite for convenience and taste is none other then lovely Japanese rice and Nori. Now this idea and it's origin actually don't take place in Japan. When I was a little kid sometimes I would come home from school and there would be my dad sitting in his chair with a big bowl of white rice. I would look at him inquisitively and he upon noticing my reaction would reply "you don't know what this is?" this is GREAT!" and I was introduced to a little of Japanese culture right then and there. Nori is seaweed, but what I'm talking about is a paste called Gohandesuyo. It is seaweed, but also has other yummy things in it. "You just take a little bit of rice like this with your chop sticks" my dad would show me "and then a little rice" and by now my sister had come to see the attention or was there the whole time in her pink pajamas, she was three or four " "and then you take the rice and put them together and there you have it dinner. I love this dinner for a couple reasons. My house is an ice box! the kitchen and the bathroom is an icebox. The rest of the house is fine, but let's just say my toothpaste freezes and once you have frozen toothpaste it kind of changes the toothpaste. Therefore my trips to the kitchen are always done in a hasty fashion and some personal coaxing is needed to venture into the location. The lovely dinner, snack is a favorite of mine and has been used my times with perfect success.

The winter is starting to retreat now I can feel the icy fingers retracting and I now want to go experience some more skiing. I will have to do so soon. Recently I have also just been to Sendai, which has been a desire of mine since I first learned of its proximity to my Naraha home. Sendai has a good feeling to it. It was very cold when Iyo and I went so we spent most of the time darting to warm places in search of warm food or things to do in warm locations. It is quite entertaining to people watch in Japan I still have not tired of simply the past time of watching Japanese daily life pass. Slowly I am comprehending more and more of the conversations taking place, but still I find difficulty of taking many conversations at once and making sense of them. For instance when we were walking around Sendai I had no clue what the women at the front of the store was shouting at the top of lungs repeatedly. It was apparent she was selling something. There is a lot of oratory advertising that goes on in Japan. I look forward to returning to Sendai when it is warm!

So now I have been in Japan for about 7 months. It is amazing how quick life changes. Sometimes I feel like just yesterday I was pushing my nose to the plastic window pane of a 747 watching the Denver lights twinkle in the distance. At other times my other life appears as a distant dream that gives me a smile and a twinkle to my eye when I think about it. I have just experienced skiing for the first time in my prefecture. I was able to go with my town and boarded a bus last Saturday at 5:30 in the morning with 20 or so other members of the Naraha town district. There were children and adults all there freezing in the middle of a freezing parking lot at 5:30. We arrived at the ski resort some 3 hours later and by the time everybody piled off the bus the environment had turned to the familiar winter scene. It was dumping snow! It was cold and a little windy and I was glad to have many warm layers on. Before everyone got on the slopes we all warmed up together. We touched our toes and then wiggled our hips and did all this in ski boots and full wear with 30 mph winds blowing snow. I loved it! It soon became apparent to me that I was one of the only ones in this group of people who had skied frequently before and so the day started off with me teaching lessons to some cute little kids in Japanese. After some time of this my friend Kosei suggested that I strike off on my own and explore Adatara mountain. Kosei was a pretty good skier himself having done so a lot in college and so I tallied forth and picked a random lift which I made out to be "Green Lift" in Japanese characters. Somehow the town had gotten my size right perfectly. The ski's that I rented were 1980's Rossignols, but I was happy and powder hungry. The mountain was quite small pretty comparable to Abasin in Colorado, but had some nice terrain on it and the snow was perfect. After taking a few runs I had the feeling that lunch time was growing near and so I struck out for the hut where the Naraha Town group was meeting for lunch. This was one of the highlights of the day. I took my ski's off and and opened the hut door and huge ramen bowls and steaming plates of curry were all around me. It was time to eat! I put my 600 or so yen into the vending machine (6$) chose what I thought looked good and what I could kind of read and then my ticket popped out and I waited in line. The cooks were cooking bowls of noodles in giant pots that could have been small hot tubs and the steam tried to warm the whole room as people passed in and out into the cold outside blizzard. My bowl finally came and the bowl was seriously the size of my head or maybe even larger and full of steamy noodles. I ate it right up slurping along with everybody else and my friend Kosei handed me a beer as well. It was a celebration of steam! Soon lunch was finished and Kosei who had been teaching lessons for the morning wanted to ski with me and I was itching to see what the mountain had to offer. We piled on our gear and headed for the Gondola. The mountain was small, but they did have a Gondola to the top more advanced portion of the mountain. A girl joined our group as well and her name was Hidoko.

The cold air bit our face as we arrived at the summit. The snow was deep and no one was on the mountain. There were some people, but powder was everywhere. Kosei was a pretty good skier as well as Hidoko and we all got our share of powder on our ski clothes by the end of the run, which is a SPO (Successful Powder Objective) Soon the day was over as the road back home was predicted to be very snowy indeed and indeed it was. I caught up on sleep on the way back as did everybody else and so gladly lost track of time, but it did take us some 5 hours to return to Naraha and when we arrived some sparkling snow had greeted even our town.

It is amazing how you start start talking about one thing and you go on about a complete side story. Anyway, yes life has changed indeed and Japan as the rest of world continues to change naturally.

Mind Down

Sitting out on a grassy plain

Watching lights and the wind again

Waiting for the storm

And I really wanna hear the words that I hear

When mind when my mind comes down

People say when you go to sleep

Coming from that simple place

Hear those simple words

That I wanna say and see and be

Balloon shines in a water show

Sparkling colors find colors in what everybody knows

Everyone knows how the flower grows

Balloon shining

Sunset Colors

Sitting out on a grassy plain

Watching lights and the wind again waiting for the storm

And I really wanna hear the words that I hear

When my mind when my mind calms down

Dirt

The bus that came abruptly stopped right in front of the boy and a long haired girl stepped off the bus to adjust her belongings and the boy boarded and she boarded after the boy. The girls name was not yet known, but she sat across from the boy on the bus and both of them stared out their windows and watched the forest pass by. As was said though, this was no ordinary bus and soon the bus started sinking into the earth until soil was at the windows and the forest and the trees disappeared from view and the bus burrowed through the soil at such high speeds that the girls hair swished across the girls face many times making her make many adjustments with her hands to keep her eyes visible. Above the ground it was silent. `` You know where we are going?`` the boy asked the girl. The girl replied ``no`` The town of Zinal lay on the edge of the forest, but this was no ordinary forest as you may be gathering and the bus slowly was gathering speed getting closer to Zinal every moment of every second. ``What is your name`` the boy asked the girl and the girl replied ``Dirree`` ``and what is your name`` the girl asked the boy. ``my name is Dover`` In his lap the boy clutched a book and on the book were stars and the stars moved constantly zig-zaging and hopping and jumping. The book was a frenzy of movement, although it stood still clasped in the boys hand. The girl looked at the book clutched in the boys hands and the boy saw her gaze and saw her question and replied ``aw for training`` and the girl smiled. The bus ripped through the ground at such high speeds that it turned yellow like the sun and glowed and sped up to go even faster. The boy and the girl smiled`` time for the treats`` they thought probably. When their thought passed and the entity of time that it takes for another thought to come to mind the bus burst to the surface and stopped at a bus stop in Zinal. People burst forth from doors and many sounds could be heard all around and many people talked about many things in the streets. Some were in fact selling apples and others clothes, but that is only as important as the fact that the girl that stepped off the bus that day had long hair.

What do you write

A boy sat out tapping his foot on an old piece of wood. Every time he tapped the piece of wood the piece of wood flinched a little and he repeated doing so. The air was cold and every breath made a misty fog that hung in the air for a few moments before escaping into the breeze. He rubbed his hands together to stay warm and he waited. He tapped his foot on the piece of wood because every time he tapped, the wood made a nice hollow sound against the ground. It gave a pleasant thump and so he continued to tap away. The boy was in a forest and a single road crept through this forest and here at this spot was a bus stop and that is precisely where the boy waited and continued to tap his foot against the piece of wood that made such a wonderful hollow sound. He was going to training at this early hour in the morning and here was the spot where he had to wait. Now this was no ordinary bus that the boy waited for. This was the Zinal Bus headed to the one and only Zinal. Zinal lay on the edge of the forest by the great lake of Kinal. Zinal and Kinal were brothers, but that is too much information to be telling anyone right now. The boy countined to give pleasant thumps to the forest and at that moment that was all that was heard.

Climbing in Koriyama!

A new post, a new post. I will play at 2 places next month in Iwaki. I`m really coming to like the Iwaki music scene. First of all all my breaks between songs are in Japanese and second it`s just so comfy! I don`t know how that can be. It`s a black room and it`s in the shape of a square, but it`s nice and wholesome kind of like wheat bread. I have not been able to find wheat bread here still. Right now it is cold. Japan is really good at conserving energy. For instance in the school I`m in at the moment the office is warm if you have a Jacket on. There is one heater that heats the whole office and it is a big office. If you go out of the office then the temperature drops to being able to see your breath. The class rooms are warm like the offices usually. It is cold here. No snow yet though, just cold. My best friend has a website which I very much want you to check out!

Zuke696 is his channel on Youtube. I am facinated by the video`s!

I will be leaving for Thailand soon and am happy to coutinue exploring the world, but wishing the teleporting machine was invented because I do not want to consume a years worth of carbon emissions by flying and will miss いよ... maybe I`ll take a boat....just kidding. We are all exploring the world right now. Last week I ran 10 km. I hadn`t done that in a while and therefore was sore afterwards. It was cold too. I love playing music and get to sing christmas songs right now for a lot of my classes. My Japanese teacher is thinking that White Christmas is perfect for the holiday season as well as the climate talks going on right now in Copenhagen. He remembers how just recently Naraha was white right about now. I laughed! Okay so I`m going to post some of my favorite vidoes that I`ve been watching. I`m also reading the story of Toyota and it is a facinating story. You want some fun facts here they are. You might already know them:

1. Toyoda was the original name but was changed to Toyota because it only took 8 strokes to write Toyota (a good luck sign)
2. Toyoda started as as a sewing business in the late 1800`s
3. The CEO for Toyota walks to work everyday
4. The toyada family still lives in Toyota City and Mrs. Toyota handles her own baggage. When people offer to help her she replies ``どして`` why,
5. The top CEO of Toyota until just recently makes about 10 times as much income as the entry level employee.

Well there`s many more, but you`ll just have to read the book and discover for yourself. Currently I`m quite impressed with Norah Jones new single Pirates. I especially like the perfect use of percussion in the song. It`s quite catchy and I think she is in Japan right now. Well I will post some video`s for you as well as the song. Be Well everybody!