Lunar Eclipse

Last night saw the last total lunar eclipse for a couple of years. It seems every time one of these rolls around I am either far from the optimal viewing area, or the sky is totally covered with clouds. Luckily this past weekend saw Japan in an excellent place to view the eclipse and the night was as clear a winter night as you could ever ask for.

 

Tess and I were walking back to my house and noticed a bite slowly being taken out of the gorgeous full moon. It was almost unnerving, watching the darkness spread across the face of the moon. It was hard to not stare at it as we walked.

Once we got home, I quickly swapped out lenses on my camera and grabbed my tripod for a little astronomical photography. I must admit, I am pretty happy with the results. My setup for this sort of thing is far from professional, but I got some good shots. It was exciting to watch the moon turn a blood red, and to record it. Though the clear December air was very chilly, it was a good thing I had the fixings for a good nabe dinner once the eclipse had finished.

Costco

Living on the other side of the Pacific Ocean from your birthplace is a sure way to make you miss things you used to take for granted. I am a pretty hungry guy, so a lot of what I miss is food related. Things have actually gotten a lot better over the years, and I can find almost anything I want these days. Almost.

Enter the newest Costco in Japan. For those who don't know, Costco is a wholesale style buyers club where you can get steep discounts by buying way more of a product than you really need. The local expats here enjoy it because it often has American and foreign goods that you just cant find anywhere else. People have long trekked into the neighboring prefecture of Saitama for a chance to fill their fridge with a dozen bratwurst. Now Maebashi has its very own store, filled with just about everything.

This was my first trip to a Japanese Costco, and it was fascinating, and cart filling. Much of the basic offerings are the same as in the states, huge bags of candy, great cuts of meat, giant blocks of cheese and more. Though there were nods to the Asian location as well, with tubs of kimchee and pallets of ramen noodles on offer too. One funny thing I noticed is that the books they had were almost universally in English, which seems strange. They must sell, because I can`t imagine them stocking them otherwise. One thing that shocked us was the sheer number of people buying frozen pizzas. The Costco frozen pizza is far cheaper than anything in the stores here, but is also far larger. Knowing the relative size of Japanese freezers and ovens, I was wondering just how this was going to work. My ride, a local, let us befuddled Americans in on the secret. People will cut up the pizza before its cooked so it will fit in the oven. Ingenious, if a little time consuming.

Being that it was opening weekend, things were pretty wild. Carts jockeyed for position with all the fervor of a Formula 1 race, and more than a few heels got nailed by the cart behind. Overall though, I was impressed with the efficiency of the staff. The lines were long but they moved quickly, much more so than I had expected. The famous Hot Dog and Drink combo was in full effect, a dirt cheap 250 yen. That and a slice of pizza for under 500 yen? I am sold!

In the end I came away with quite a few goodies, including a 24 pack of non-name brand microbrew, a box of raisin bran, some bratwurst, some pre-cooked breakfast sausage patties (they didn't have fresh sausage, alas) and a giant bag of limes. On the list for next time is real ground beef (its often mixed with pork here), tons of cheese, New York cut steaks and more. It is really nice to have this sort of thing lurking in the neighborhood, even if I will need to beg for rides and the use of my friends membership cards!

Rolling Thunder

I am happy to report my computer issues have been resolved, for now. In celebration, and while I process my Korea pictures, I present a few shots I took a couple of weeks ago when a huge thunderstorm rolled over Maebashi. I was lucky enough that the center of the storm stayed away from my area, offering a perfect view of the fireworks with none of the pouring rain or power outages others had to deal with. These are certainly the best lightning photos I have ever had the privilege to take.

Mjölnir

A pair of thunderstorms rolled over Maebashi last night. Of the 18 photos I shot, these were the only two that caught Thor in action, but I'm still pretty pleased with that result, especially the bottom one.

The Sky is Burning

 

Yesterday saw a spectacularly fiery sunset behind Mt. Haruna. I Shot a few frames, though on second shot I probably shouldn't have been looking through the viewfinder all zoomed in. My eyes do seem to still be working, so maybe all is well. 

Easter in Japan

It had been a while since I had seen the inside of a Church, so I tracked down a local one so I could attend Easter Mass. The one I found in downtown Maebashi holds services in English, and Portuguese and Spanish, but only on certain Sundays. For Easter, things were to be in Japanese.

On this perfect spring morning I met up with a friend who was also interested in seeing how things were celebrated locally, even though she leans more Protestant then my own papist persuasion. I was a bit surprised at how full the Church ended up being. It wasn't a very large building, but for obvious reasons you don't expect to run into many Catholics in Japan.The vast majority of those attending were Japanese, though there were a sprinkling of Europeans and Filipinos there as well. In a pleasant surprise, while most of the service was Japanese, they read each reading twice, once in 日本語, and once in English. A few of the hymns were sung in English as well, by a small guitar accompanied choir. Singing the rest of the songs in Japanese was a fun challenge. It wasn't easy trying to read the music and the language at the same time. My results were rather mixed.

Seated a couple of rows in front of us were a threesome of rather rowdy young Japanese boys. They goofed off, played with a sports drink bottle, and generally paid no attention to the service whatsoever. So pretty much just like American kids. The most interesting departure from what I remember back home was the peace. Rather than a hearty hand shake and a "Peace be With you", everybody just bowed to their neighbors while mumbling something about heiwa.

In a surprise ending, all the newcomers that day were made to stand up and introduce themselves! It was rather shocking, and a tad bit awkward. As a foreigner here, you know you stand out. You try to avoid standing out too much, but you know that you will never, ever blend in. So you tend to do your best to avoid situations that call even more attention to yourself. Say situations like standing up in church on Easter telling everybody your name and where you come from!

That embarrassing aside over, we ducked out to a local family restaurant for brunch. A quesadilla, Salisbury steak and a chicken cesar salad made for an unusual but delicious Easter meal.

The Red Castle in Snow

              Snow wise this winter has been very mild. Maebashi is protected by the Echigo mountain range to our west, and so all the precipitation falls on my old stomping grounds in Kanazawa, and points north. The city itself has seen flurries only rarely, and only this week have we got anything worth the name snow. It snowed Wednesday morning, but the accumulation was gone by 10 am. It is snowing now, as I write this though, and is forecast to keep it up over the weekend.

 

              While it has been very nice to not have to deal with the daily tribulations of regular snow fall, it doesn’t really seem like winter without at least an occasional glimpse. Luckily, Mt. Akagi, my backyard dormant volcano, has had a nice snow cap since late December. Recently Peter and I decided to get some  use out of my snow tires and see how things looked up top.

              It was a clear day with a deep blue sky, but even from my apartment I could see how fast the wisps of cloud were moving around the summit. Did this inspire me to grab a hat and gloves? Of course not! The drive up wasn’t bad at all, I continue to be impressed with my little car, it really is a champion.

              The summit lake is very popular for ice fishing, though I have never really seen the appeal. Fishing itself is fun if a tad boring, but add in biting wind and sub zero temperatures and it just seems like torture. Though there are obviously plenty of people who disagree with me, as the lake was dotted with a fair number of small shelters.

              Hatless and gloveless as we were, we still walked from the parking area to Akagi shrine. The area is always beautiful, but the red shrine, white snow and blue sky all came together to be particularly picturesque.

上毛電鉄

My area is served by the Jomo Electric Railway, a non Japan Rail local line that runs between Maebashi and the nearby city of Kiryu. The trains are small, old, and expensive to ride, but despite all that it has become my train system, and so I will defend it with all my heart.

              Despite not being JR, the Jomo line still maintains the Japanese reputation of punctuality. Though unfortunately the trains only run every half hour, so if my own punctuality is lacking it can be a bit of a pain waiting for the next train. Fairly often I will ride the train into Maebashi rather than drive, so I have amassed quite a few photos of Ogo Station.

             The line runs to Chuo-Maebashi station, which is a kilometer walk from the main JR station. There is a shuttle bus that connects the two for a mere 100 yen, but usually I like to walk it. It's fast enough, and as long as it isn't raining it can be rather pleasant.

              Ogo also marks the location of the service and repair yard for the whole line. A couple of weekends ago they held an open house where people could walk around the yard and the maintenance shed. The event was free, but there were souvenirs and food for sale, and I am sure they were hoping that people would ride the train in to see the sights.

              They have a few restored older train cars that are trotted out for special occasions. Sometimes they will even make the run into Maebashi. I haven’t had that opportunity yet, but it was still kind of fun to get up close and check them out. Though even the regular line trains are antiques of a sort, they date from the 1960s!

              It was nice having an activity going on in Ogo, it often seems that I have to leave my area to do much of interest, and I was happy to be proved wrong for a weekend.

Maebashi Matsuri

I apologize that I haven't updated in a while. I've beat off two successive colds over the past two weeks, and so I haven't really done much that is blog worthy over the past couple of weeks.

Until today that is.

The Maebashi Matsuri is THE major festival for the city. The weather was gorgeous, so rather than take the train into town, I rode my bike. It was a long ride, but it felt great to get out and about. Sadly, my camera didn't have a memory card, so I didn't get any photos of the festival at all.

Things kicked off with a dance ceremony. The very first group to take the stage were a series of young girls doing cheerleader dance routines set to American pop music. I couldn't help but laugh at the fact that here we are kicking off an event with great cultural and even religious import with kids dancing to Avril Lavigne. Though I have to say that the kids did a great job, they really knew their stuff. Later groups were a bit more traditional, including one that used two huge flags to backstop their performance. These flags were so large that the poles were in danger of hitting the powerlines, and sometimes did! I could see the flag bearers working harder than the dancers to keep them flapping, and the effect was very impressive.

Next on the schedule was the reason I came, the elementary school marching band parade. Now I know a lot of readers probably did a bit of a double take, I'm well known for a general dislike of parades and marching bands. However, all that changes when it is YOUR kids doing the marching. And while I may only see these kids once a week, they are still my kids. It was great seeing them all spiffy in their uniforms, and I think they got a kick out of seeing "English Teacher" on the sidelines. After the parade, I walked over to the ending area to say hi to the kids and the teachers. My kids know me well, their first question was, "Are you hungry?"

Being that I was a little hungry, I headed back into the maelstrom to see what I could find to eat. While I was perusing the plentiful purveyors of festival food I came upon an all female taiko troupe doing a performance. I love taiko drumming, and throw in a group of gorgeous 20 something women and I really love taiko. It doesn't hurt that they were very good at what they did. The performance banished all thought of food from my mind, at least until it was over.

As people were filtering away from the area a new call went up, a mikoshi was coming through. Mikoshi are portable Shinto shrines, and are often a part of festivals. I had seen a few tromping about, but this one was coming right up the middle of the pedestrian mall, pushing the crowd out to the sides as it came. I watched them pass and thought to myself that it looked like the mikoshi was very heavy, the bearers were working hard to keep it moving. As they were almost by me an elderly gentleman came up and asked if I wanted to wear his happi, a sort of coat that all the bearers wear, and help carry? I jumped at the chance, and soon found out that yes, the shrine was indeed very heavy. Brutally so. Painfully so. Still, it was amazing, trying to chant, carry, and move simultaneously without falling into a heap. Definitely a highlight of the festival.

From there, exhausted I made my way over to a karaage (fried chicken) stand where I finally got something for lunch. I can say for certain that the festival was amazing, and really just the Japan only sort of shot in the arm I needed this month.

Play Ball!

A couple of weeks ago I finally had the chance to catch a Japanese baseball game. The 'home' team was the Saitama Seibu Lions, from the prefecture next door. They played the Osaka Orix Buffaloes, which was the team we ended up rooting for. Entering the stadium, we got to choose which teams 'section' to sit in. I picked the Buffaloes because there were more open seats, so we could sit closer to the field. The Lions took an early lead, and so the American love of the underdog came out and we ended up cheering pretty hard for the boys from Osaka.

They must have heard us, because despite some horrible baseball on their part in the early part of the game, they came back and ended up winning 8 to 4. I really enjoyed my first trip to a baseball game in Japan. The smaller field made for a much more intimate game. The fans were so much quieter and nicer than at the last American game I saw. Though there were 'cheap seat' cheering sections for each team, each with their own band ready to strike up the team fight song!

Tanabata

In Japan the seventh day of the seventh month brings the festival of Tanabata, celebrating the meeting of the stars Altair and Vega in the sky.

There is a folktale describing the origins of the festival. Orihime (Vega) was the daughter of the Sky King. She sat by the banks of the heavenly river, the Milky Way, and wove cloth all day. She worked so hard, that she never had time to meet or love anybody. Her father wanted his daughter to be happy, and introduced her to Hikoboshi (Altair), a cow herder who worked on the other side of the river. The two fell in love and were married right away, but once happily married Orihime stopped weaving and Hikoboshi stopped tending his cows, who wandered  willy nilly around the heavens.

The Sky King couldn't let this continue, and separated the happy lovers with the Milky Way. Orihime was distraught to be apart from her true love, and so her father allowed them to meet once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month.

The modern Tanabata is a bit of a date night, and mostly an excuse to get dressed up in yukata (light, cotton kimono made for summer wear) and eat lots of wonderful festival food. I looked into buying a yukata, but UniQlo didn't stock any men's styles this year, and the specialty yukata shop's wares were 150 bucks, which is a bit steep for something I may wear once or twice a year.

So I put on street clothes, grabbed my umbrella, and headed downtown to stuff myself on overpriced street food. I went with a lot of options I'd never tried before, including a mochi- potato creation with salt and butter, a Chinese flat bread like the ones I enjoyed so much in China, and a ramen burger, which was a creation of fried ramen noodle 'buns' with pork, fish cake, cabbage and ramen broth sauce. It was all amazing!

Commuter's Paradise

This is the view that greets me every time I leave my apartment. The other day the sky was clear and blue after a long 36 hours of rain, and the weather was such as to make the drive to work an absolute joy! People who know me know that I am not a 'car person' and don't often use the words driving, work and joy in the same sentence.  In fact, it has been over five years since I had to drive a car to work every day. I've biked to work, walked to work and taken trains to work, but I've always avoided commuting by car.

Now though, I have little choice in the matter. Indeed, my area is so spread out that I've probably been driving more miles per day recently then I have in years. However, a few things have conspired to make me more amenable to a vehicular lifestyle. Despite the occasional run in with the Jomo Electric Railway, the roads in my area are blissfully free of both traffic and stoplights. Indeed, since I'm driving from the (relatively) more urban to towards the rural, and traffic I do see is usually headed the other way.

Driving to work surrounded by such amazing views certainly helps put a smile on my face in the mornings. This is actually a road perpendicular to the one I usually travel on, but I had to pull off to get this shot, as it's rather uncommon to have this clear of a day. You can see the rugged massif of Mt. Haruna on the right, and the conical snow covered Mt. Asama on the left. Both are volcanic in origin, and while Haruna is currently dormant (though not extinct!) Asama is the most active volcano on Honshu. It isn't common to be able to see all the way to Asama, perched as it is on the boarder of Gunma and Nagano prefectures.

 This view is much more typical of my daily drive to work, facing due north towards the much closer Akagi-san. Mt. Akagi dominates the skyline of the whole area, and all four of my schools are nestled in the farming communities that dot the slopes. With the latest city mergers, Maebashi City limits actually extend all the way to the summit of Mt. Akagi, though of course the population peters out long before you get all the way to the top. So there you have it, the key to commuting glee. Throw together some sleeping volcanoes, rice paddies, the occasional cow and a distinct lack of traffic and what more could a latent petrol head desire?

The Cherry Blossoms of Maebashi

At the height of the Cherry Blossoms last week, Maebashi was graced with perfect spring weather. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and the wind was warm. My new friend Ryan came down from Nagano to pay a visit to our fine city, and local ALT Anna also came down from the mountains for a day in the park.

Adjacent to the Prefectural Office is Maebashi Park, the ancient location of the local castle. What's left isn't very military looking at all, but it does make for a gorgeous city park.

A small river borders one side of the park, and gloriously white cherry blossoms lined both banks, dropping delicate flowers into the deep blue green waters whenever the wind picked up.

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The 32 floor Prefectural Office looms over much of Maebashi, its by far the tallest and most modern building in town. Hanami (literally "flower viewing") isn't just about gazing at the beautiful and short lived cherry blossoms, it's also about good food, good friends and good alcohol.

The paths through Maebashi Park were lined with food stalls, selling all manner of amazing festival food. This stall had karage (fried chicken) on offer, and other stalls competed with okonomiyaki, yaki tori, sausages, cucumbers on a stick and more. I always like to say you can judge a country on it's street and festival food, and in that comparison Japan ranks pretty highly!

Of course, we weren't the only ones out and about in the city, much of the population of Maebashi was also enjoying the fine spring weather, excellent food, and crisp refreshing sake, chu-hi and beer. People even made the trek from nearby Takasaki, to make sure the park was filled with revelers!

As the afternoon waned, the day grew a bit more chill, and we decided that we had viewed enough flowers, and drunk enough sake, so we made for the center of town, and the local karaoke box. Later that night, on the way home, Ryan and I came across one of the rivers that cuts through the city had been decorated with lanterns for the season. It really made for a beautiful end to a very beautiful day.

The Large Barbarian

As I mentioned before, on paper I live in Maebashi, but the real name of my community is Ogo aka 大胡. If you dissect the characters, it means large barbarian, which is one of the stranger Japanese town names I've come across. (Most are pretty standard, Kanazawa is Golden Marsh, Tokyo is simply Eastern Capital.) This image is a panorama, facing towards the slopes of Mt. Akagi and the town center of Ogo.

This picture was also taken from the second floor of my apartment building, and is facing towards central Maebashi. While we may be surrounded by mountains on three sides, honestly its rare that things are clear enough to really get a view of much beyond the looming mass of Mt. Akagi right by me. Despite the clouds this was one of those days that the other high peaks peeked out to say hello.

One of the fun things about being in Japan is that every town and area has its own unique manhole cover. This is Ogo's and of course a dominant design motif is the mountains. The private Jomo Electric Railway runs quite close to my apartment to Ogo station, which is a pretty major stop on the line. I can tell that because the stop actually has staff, like much of the surroundings the Jomo line has seen more productive days, and many of the stations are now sans staff.  In other transportation related news, I've now put over 500 kilometers on my little Kei Car, and am only working on my second tank of gas. Not bad at all, considering its been up a mountain or two already...