Today for lunch I had my first hamburger after living here. I got a recommendation from a friend to hit up this place that has "sasebo" style burgers.
I'm now on a mission to find a GOOD hamburger in my area. This burger I ate was GROSS. I wont even describe it to you, the horror would be too great. If I can't find a good burger joint in my area before I come back to visit the states.. I'm going to be eating in-n-out 4 times a day. Woe to the man who tries to stop me.
Getting there was interesting. My predecessor sold me his craptastic bicycle which he described as "really awesome and wish I could take it with me". The thing is a giant rust bucket. The kickstand would not even go up, it was fused together with rust. I had to bend the kickstand frame 90 degrees out, just so I could ride it. Now the kickstand juts out in just the right position that allows it to remove Japanese peoples kneecaps. I'm naming it the kneecapitator.
But you probably don't have much to fear, as it's about as much fun to ride as going to prison and dropping the soap. Besides being a rust bucket, its also a "mama-chari". Which means its a old style bike with no suspension, a basket on the front (quite useful in Japan actually), and small tires on it. It's rickety, it makes your ass sore and whenever I hit a small bump I can hear thousands of my unborn children cry out in anguish. And when I hit a large bump, I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
I'm buying a mountain bike soon. Real. Soon.
But until then, you Japanese moms may want to send your children out with knee pads.
So things are going well here. I still have yet to settle in to my apartment though. This weekend I was planning on doing some organizing and cleaning up, but plans came up and I left for out of town.
Friday night, some of the Japanese guys at work wanted to go out for a night of food and drink at the top of the local mountain. I had really wanted to go and do this ever since they took us there for a tour in the daytime. I'll be heading back there in November for some hang gliding also! The 4th and newest member of our ALT team arrived that day also. Pictures are up!
Then Saturday we left for a road trip down south to Kushima. In Cape Toi every year, they do a "Fire festival". This consists of a pole that's 9 stories high, with a basket full of fireworks at the top. They get a bunch of guys drunk and then give them these balls of fire on a rope, which they twirl around and then launch into the air trying to make it in the basket. Once somebody makes it, which can take as long as 90+ minutes, some fireworks in the basket goes off and everybody cheers. Then the pull the 9 story (90 feet) high wooden pole down.
Wanna know the fun part? The crowd is about.. 85-90 feet away in a circle. So the first danger is when these fireballs go off on a tangent. I mean its on a rope, so its really easy to accidentally let go at the wrong time and have that thing go flying backwards. Which happened. This year only 1 went wayyyy off course. It managed to nail my friend also. It would have hit him in the head, but it was pouring rain the entire time, so it just caught his umbrella on fire! Then when they pull that thing down, you gotta run for your life again or get crushed. That was Freaky! This festival would have been banned in the 1950's for being too dangerous if this was the U.S. Luckily Japan ROCKS. I've got no pictures of this, because it was pouring rain and I didn't want my camera to break. Next year maybe.
Later that night we drove down to a little tiny beach area and camped out. We had our tents up in the sand, made a pretty large fire, I bought some fireworks and had some fun and we sound of crashing waves sent us to dream land. Or they should have but it was so freaking muggy and hot, especially inside the tents, that I really only got 2-3 hours of sleep. It was fun though. And then going for a swim in the morning was pretty nice.
We drove back Sunday afternoon, and then stopped at a tiny little place that fed us, and let us use their bath and hot spring. I don't actually know if we stopped at a little bed and bath place, or a retirement place, or what. But it was nice and the atmosphere was very relaxing.
Oh, I forgot to mention that before we headed back on Sunday we took a little detour to check out Kojima, otherwise known as Monkey Island. I have not got my pictures up on Flickr yet, but they should be up soon. Pretty much it's a tiny island that has a bunch of monkeys. And since people go to visit all the time, they are completely used to people. Also, since your not allowed to feed them, or touch them, they ignore everybody. Much better than monkeys who go nuts for people food and try to steal stuff from everybody. You could get within a few feet of these guys and they would just ignore you. Here is a little taste of some of the photos I took:
I have not started teaching yet. That happens next Tuesday I think. Looking forward to it!
My camera came a few days ago. So I took some pics Friday and Saturday. You can see the first set by clicking here. It's some photos of around my city and a few pics of from Friday's night out. A bunch of current ALT's and new ALT's got together for a welcoming party.
The other set which you can see by clicking here, is from Saturday when some friends of mine took me out to go see Kagoshima. It's a city to the west of me, about a 90 minute drive. There is a volcano and such there. It was hot. Very very hot. Not Tucson hot, but still hot enough.
I'm not so used to the humidity here. Overall its not as bad as Tucson, but in Tucson you wouldn't go outside all that often. I'm used to sweat evaporating as soon as it appears and buildings having their AC set on permafrost. AC isn't so cold here. They try to help the environment by using less energy. But then they go ahead and burn their garbage pretty much wherever you look. Often it stinks so bad because some dude has a bonfire going down the block. They pretty much separate their garbage into 3 things. Recyclable, burnable, and non-burnable. From my understanding, burnable means "Hey Daryl, this'll burn durn guud *her huck*" Where as the logical approach one SHOULD take is "While this will burn, it is covered in lead paint so I probably shouldn't throw this into the bonfire" Sadly, I don't think this is given any thought. I could be wrong though.
There are bees like mad out here. Lovely Japanese Giant hornets. The size of humming birds. I thought it WAS a humming bird. They can actually spray you with caustic venom, that also calls in every other single Giant hornet in Japan to come kill you. Something like 50 people a year die this way. Don't matter if you have an allergy or not to these bastards. I was thinking hiking was a nice hobby to pick up... now I'm thinking Flamethrower 101 is a good class to enroll in.
Notice my work car in the set of photos. I was driving the same day I took that photo, and a Bee came and overtook me. My car can't even outrun insects here. Sigh.
Sorry for the lack of info everybody. I have been really busy with everything.
My work day consits of being at the office at 8:30 and then filling out paperwork, signing contracts, visiting schools(I have 15), and various other tasks that are required for me to setup. Yesterday I took one of the City`s cars and was told to go try to find some of my schools on my own. Driving here is not so bad, I got used to it fairly fast. I`m having issues with the speed limit though. It`s 40-50Km/H, which is a whopping 25-30mph. In the city its fine, because you are literally passing by cars/people/bikes/scooters/telephone poles/guard rails/EVERYTHING within a few inches of clearance. In the more rural areas though, its hard to stay that slow.
After work, I usually am out shopping. For food, furniture, daily needs. I`m not at home that much currently. And when I am home, I am cleaning up, doing dishes, cooking, laundry, etc. Just last night (2 weeks after being here) I unpacked my suitcases! Yay!
I ordered my camera online a few days ago, it should be here by early next week I think. Hopefully by then I can get the rest of my stuff unpacked, and after that I should have some free time.
I still have to make lesson plans for the 6 different grades I am teaching, at 15 different schools. I also have to go out of town for 3-4 days next week for another orientation. The following week I have to help prepare and judge speech contests. And then the following week maybe school starts. So don`t expect too many updates yet.
