Japan thus far.....

I arrived in Japan on Wednesday..since I failed to mention my arrival in my post on Friday...my getting to Japan went relatively smoothly.  Out of Grand Rapids we had a frozen pipe and so had just over an hour delay while it thawed and then had to wait for maintenance to give us the OK....I was fine, but others with shorter layovers than mine were starting to panic.  Kinda wish I had had longer in Chicago than sitting on the plane in Grand Rapids...I was planning on using all my time to make sure all the my batteries were fully charged.  As it was, my ipod was dead and only had time to charge my nook up to 36% battery capacity. My nook lasted me till the end of the book I was reading....which was still about 10 hours from Japan...most of which I slept...So I guess that part of it was OK. 

The entire flight I mostly kept to myself.  I was seated next to 2 young Japanese exchange students...who I think were dating.  They talked to each other in extremely hushed tones and hardly acknowledged my existance.  They were probably just shy...as most Japanese people are when it comes to speaking English to native speakers....not that I couldn't have done a semi-decent job in Japanese...but they didn't seem interesting in finding out if I understood.  Kinda depressing.  But oh well, at least I wasn't right next to the couple with the baby that cried almost the entire flight!  After landing in Narita I had to catch a bus to Tokyo Station (a 1.5hr trip) and then transfer to a bus to Iwaki (another 3.5 hours) which is where my friends picked me up.  The 4 of us went to eat Japanese style hamburgers (this is 9:30pm Japan time) we ended up leaving Iwaki around 10:30 to go to their house....(yet another 1.5 hours away).  So basically I woke up at 5:30am on Tuesday morning and was on the move till the 10am on Wednesday if I was staying in the same time zone.  Impressive right!?

The Hanafuda cards we played with!



Over the last couple of days my friends have been making sure I was entertained.  I was not expecting that, since I knew they had jobs.  Turns out they took Thursday off, and Friday was a holdiay.  Thursday I went to the local onsen (hot spring) for an extremely relaxing bath in the morning.  I would have liked to have stayed longer, but they had made plans to take me visit their son Yu who is close to my age and speaks decent English (for someone who grew up in rural Japan) and lives in a tourist town.  I'd met him a few times last time I was in Japan, both in Kawauchi at Hiroko and Ken's house and in Koriyama where he was living at the time.  It was nice seeing him again. He showed us around and then we went shopping at an outlet mall. He is training to be a chef and supposibly made us pasta for dinner, but I didn't see or smell anything.  He said it tasted so good that he ended up eating all of it before we got there.  I think he was just lazy, didn't make anything, and then lied about it!  So we ended up going out to dinner...which was probably better than what Yu  would have made us.  I've had pasta in Japan before....it leaves much to be desired.  The day was fun, on the drive back to their house I fell asleep...I was apparently VERY tired since they told me yesterday that I was snoring really loud the whole way back.  Man was I embarassed.  I usually never snore, in fact I'm usually so quiet friends have told me there were concerned I was alive and breathing...why or why did the first time in forever have to be in a car ride?!!?  Once we got back we turned on the TV and played a Japanese card game called HANAFUDA...I'm still not sure if I know how to play it, it's kind of like a wacky Japanese version of poker I guess. 

Friday they paraded me around to their families, Hiroko made Curry Rice for lunch...I did my internet browsing and then we went bowling.  Hiroko predicted the order of winners would go as follows:

1.Ken

2.Hiroko

3.Akiko

4.Me

I played tennis with them when I was living in Kawauchi before....and unfortuntely told them I was good at it.  I hadn't played in probably 6 years...how was I supposed to know that in that time I had gotten horrible in that time?  They brought this up and used it in their reasoning that I would royally suck in bowling too!  They continued to birate me about idiotic things I had done last time for the whole 45 minute drive to the bowling alley.  Lucky for me I love bowling and go a decent amount of times.. after 3 games the final rankings turned out as:

1.Ken

2.Me

3.Akiko

4.Hiroko

Turns out Hiroko is the one that isn't good!! I was SOOO amused about this!  We had italian for dinner and then came back to watch Tv at Akiko's house before taking turns enjoying her EXTREMELY hot and large bath tub.  I was pretty much crashing by the time Ken had his turn so we got in the car and headed back to their house. 

mmmm...yummy!

Yesterday there was about a foot of snow...it had been coming down non-stop since Friday morning, so we decided to stay in.  We had gotten the ingredients for apple pie, steak and mashed potatoes when we were in the bigger town for bowling on Friday and I cooked them an American dinner.  I was really worried about the Apple Pie..Japanese ovens are tricky.  While the steak marinated and the dough for the pie is rose we watched an eating contest on TV....it's sooo much more civilized than eating contests in the US....AND they do with time limits....not till people fall over overstuffed.  For once I didn't feel like barfing right along with the contestants as I watched.  Half way through baking of the Pie, Akiko called and told us she wasn't coming as she decided to go out on a date..or at least I think that's where she went.  So Ken called one of his co-workers who is my age that he gets along really well with and asked if she wanted to join us and try American food.  She got there just as I was starting the mashed potatoes and Hiroko sent her into the kitchen to be my "assistant."  It was interesting and dinner turned out delicious...including the pie...which was a raving success!  When we were done eating and just sitting around talking Hiroko mentioned I loved going to the onsen, but how Hiroko refused to go with me....Sat-chan (not sure if this is her actual name) suggested we go right then.  I wanted to go, as I said I love going to the onsen, but was a little leary about going with someone I had met mere hours ago.  It was one of those only in Japan things that you should expect, but still never do.  Think nothing of making a friend by going and taking a bath together!  OH, and to top it all off...on the way to the onsen she pulled out her keitai (cellphone) called a friend of her's and invited her too.  We didn't even exchange names (Ippo-chan) until we were undressing!! AGAIN...only in Japan!  After the onsen the 3 of us headed back to Hiroko's and stayed up chatting...I crashed out at 3am.  When I woke up at 7 to use the bathroom Sat-chan, Ippo-chan and Hiroko were all still sitting around the table entergetic as can be and talking.  Shaking my head I used the facilities and then crawled back upstairs and fell asleep again.

 I arrived in Tokyo about 2 hours ago...it took me practically the entire time to drag all of my suitcaes around the subway...yes subway....to get to my hostel.  At the entrace I got 3 nice Japanese guys to help me carry down my bags....thank goodness I did, as it turned out there were at least 7 flights of steps.  I wasn't quite so fortunate for the trip back up to street level, but luckily that time it was only 2 flights of steps.  I'm in Tokyo for 2 days and then I am flying to Taiwan for a week....I have no plans or ideas in mind for what to do the rest of today and tomrrow.  The front desk staff here seems nice...maybe they will have some suggestions.  I've done Tokyo before...so I'll probably just explore around my hostel.  It's in Asakasa..a really cool area that I only looked around briefly before....hopefully everything goes well!