Catching Up on the Last Few Weeks (of Summer!!)

You may have noticed I am slightly behind on blogging ;-) Not having internet for a while (partially due to not having a home computer, and partially due to just not being home or having the time) set me back, but I have also been a little slack. Before I tell you about what I've been up to this week (in a separate post), I'll catch you guys up on the last few weeks.

More on Summer Sonic

So the last time I wrote I had just attended the Summer Sonic music festival in Osaka. The concerts were amazing and I think I walked away from that experience with much higher regard for both Death Cab for Cutie and Coldplay. I hadn't previously realized the singer from Death Cab was the same lead in the Postal Service (another fave band I discovered off the Garden State soundtrack), but what really got to me was both the quality of their performance (already like the music that I knew). Just to give one example, at one point during the Death Cab set, the band started playing "When Soul Meets Body" (a pretty big hit) but it sounded a little off.  Live music can be different, right?  Wrong.  The lead singer actually stopped the show and had the band start the song over because the chords weren't completely right, telling the crowd that he knew that we had paid a lot of money for these tickets and deserved to see a good show (and that they were also consumers and liked good music, and would expect the same of the bands they saw). How rad. Also puts into perspective how awful the Sex Pistols were.  They showed up 30 minutes late for an hour-long set, sounded horrible, and then the lead singer told everyone he didn't have a voice.  We promptly left after that (think my patience was gone after 20 minutes of waiting) and just went down to the Prodigy show.  

I have probably gushed enough about Coldplay and I know they are becoming massive in the mainstream music industry (which - to some people - makes them less cool), but their show was probably the highlight of the weekend for me.  I still really associate their music with my first year in Norway and like the new CD, too, so it was personally gratifying to hear the music live.

Summer Sonic also introduced me to some great music, including bands like The Kills, Band of Horses, Blood Red Shoes, the Fratellies and the Kooks. I had maybe heard a song or two from these guys beforehand, but after the event, I now have their CDs in my iPod and am enjoying the new tunes.

Yashiro 2008

After the weekend of Summer Sonic ended, I had to go back for work for two days and then was out of town again for another few, this time at the Hyogo Prefecture Government training center in Yashiro, Japan.  The center at Yashiro is commonly and fondly referred to as "Yashiro Prison" but the place isn't really that bad.  It just doesn't help that the walls are plain and white, there's literally nothing around the center (even the convenience store is gone now), there is a curfew for adults and there are really strict, general rules - including ones about how to correctly fold your sheets.  My three days volunteering at orientation were interesting, but the place was a lot better than I remembered it being when I had to attend an orientation there two years ago.  I think people just dislike going to the country for training... can you blame them? 

In order to save money ("for the taxpayers") and keep the noise levels down, there was no reception/ceremony/party this time around (strange for Japan), which was unfortunate because the Japanese kitchen staff doubles as an Elvis coverband (the head chef has a white jumpsuit and about 150 guitars at home!) and I was really looking forward to hearing them play.  The time went by fast, though, the food was good (one thing I was not looking forward to) and everything went smoothly. The second of the three days was probably the most exhausting for me personally as I lead a few workshops, which required talking all afternoon, but hopefully the participants got something out of it. 

Oh, and just for the random trivia lovers out there, Yashiro (or a town next to it) is essentially the "belly button of Japan", where latitude and longitude cross and literally the center of this country.  But moving on...

Two Weekends Ago - More Goodbyes and Friends fromOut of Town

(Friday/Saturday)

After Yashiro, I was back in town for another night (Friday), this time going to a goodbye dinner for yet another person leaving Japan. We met at a park near Amagasaki and ended up going to a swanky conveyer belt sushi joint (where I decided to re-try sake...again...and actually liked it for the first time!) with a small group and the departing guy's host family from when he studied in Japan.

The next morning, I set off in the opposite direction, Himeji-yuki (towards Himeji) to meet up with some of my volunteer friends who were visiting from out of town. I had actually just seen two of the girls, Caroline and Alaina (both on the Corporate committee with me) in Tokyo a few weeks back, but it was sort of fun to have them on home turf and Caroline brought a friend from Shimane Prefecture (mountainous area on the other side of the country where she lives) who was pretty cool, too. 

After playing around and showing the girls the hippy store in central Himeji for a bit (an area which has limited options), Alaina went home to Nara Prefecture and the two other girls came back to stay at my house for the next two nights. The region I live in is fairly international compared to most places in Japan, so we opted for Nepalese food for dinner - get it while you can! - and spent their first night in town going on a 3-hour bike tour of my community. I don't actually live in Kobe, more like in an outer-ring suburb slash industrial-area-in-the-rice fields, but we ended up seeing the reflexology stones near Befu, the Onaki Iseki ancient village in Harimacho, the musical bridge and - of course - a view of the famous Akashi Pearl bridge from the man-made island near my house. I think I wore the girls out, but it was good and seeing the bridge and just watching the calm waters from the island was a peaceful way to end the adventure.

(Sunday)

The next day, I had to run some errands and prepare for the week (work stuff), so Caroline checked out the earthquake museum while I did my thing and then I met her to go to the sake breweries in Kobe. Unfortunately, the breweries were closed for the Obon holiday (foiled again!), so we just walked around Kobe (or accross it, rather - from Meriken Park and Harbourland to Sannomiya), met a big group of friends for dinner at La Pause, ended up actually eating at Sweets Paradise (all-you-can-eat desert!) and then walked around the old foreign settlement overlooking Kobe along with our friend Goran (who Caroline also knows) until last train.

We had rented movies during our little cycling sojourn the previous evening, but Caroline and I finally walked in the door around 1am, too tired to watch them... and ended up talking for a few hours.  We really only got a few hours for sleep before Caroline had to get up to catch her train and I had to meet my ride for English Camp, but it was fun having her here.  It's been a long time since I've had a girls slumber party :)

Akashi Nishi Sch0ol Retreat

On Monday morning, I was off to the Akashi Nishi High School English Camp retreat.  I have been on several school fieldtrips in Japan (most notably, to USJ and Himeji Castle), but this was my first English camp... and I loved it! I won't go into a million details, but it was basically a 3-day intensive English-learning summer session for the advanced-level students at a local Super English high school. I only had to plan 2 lessons for the event, and taught both a few times, but we also had a speech competition, a drama competition (with plays the students wrote) and an "English race"/Scavanger hunt (that I totally want to replicate with my students). It was also a lot of fun just to hang out with the students (while setting off fireworks one evening or during breaks, etc), who were a really great and outgoing group of high schoolers, not to mention the other staff members. My neighbor from New Zealand and another woman I haven't gotten to know that well since we've both lived here were also on staff, and just having them around definitely made the three days a more fun.  I laughed a lot.

On Thursday and Friday, I hung out in the area but still found myself busy enough with catching up. My new computer arrived, so I spent some time playing around with that and biked to school in the mornings.  I got sort of mad at a coworker on Friday who saw me pumping up my bike tires and told me they were low because I "have been starting to get on the plump side".  Oh Japan.  I told the coworker it was not nice or OK to say that, and the reply was just that he was honest.  The local IFA ladies told my tall, thin friend she was getting  too fat last week, too, and she's probably still a size 2.  I guess I had forgotten how fast people are to remind you abut stuff like this.  Maybe it is time to get back into running more regularly, though... erm, just to get in shape and not because of the comment... of course.

Local Weekend and Now We're up to Date!

Yeah, so that's about it!  This past weekend I just hung out with people in the area.  Friday was a little party in Harimacho, the town over, where we basically just finished off the stuff we had left over from the 4th of July, I went to another amazingly delicious Taco Night at my friend Shag's house (who is also leaving in a few months!?) in Kobe on Saturday and I got together with my friend Ben, who lived here my first year and just moved back to Japan, on Sunday.  We met for lunch, but I ended up staying way past dinner, spending the whole day in Sannomiya just setting up Ben's cell phone, going shopping and getting together with another old friend of Ben and myself that I hadn't seen in almost a year.

This week has been pretty amazing as well.  Typhoon season is here so it's raining a lot, but it's the last week of summer and I'm trying to take advantage of all of it.  I'll post a separate blog about the week (including about my new school... working at 2 now) but thanks for catching up and more soon.