Spring is in the Air!

Hi friends :-)

It's been over 2 months since my last blog.   One would naturally think, "Oh, wow, she must be really busy."  But no, friends, I really haven't, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.  I actually haven't been working for over a month.  And lets be honest, even when I am working regularly, it's not nearly as many hours as I'm use to.   But in good news, I haven't totally been nothing.   I'll share some of my adventures with you now.

Our dear friend, and Bryan's co-worker, Amanda ran the Tokyo Marathon.  Of course we couldn't miss this opportunity to cheer her on!   She's the one in all blue, not the Asian man in the foreground.  I have other close ups of her running, but I chose his picture since you can see more of the course and some other runners.  

Perhaps you noticed that she wasn't with the majority of the other 35,000 runners.  That's because she's super fast.  I think she was the 16th woman to finish, around 2 hours and 42 minutes.  We tried to cheer her on from several different spots, but even though we were taking the train, she beat us to a couple spots!

Love him!

More skiing!  We went back to Mt. Naeba again, but this time we wen to a different side of the mountain, to the Kagura resort.   This picture only shows a part of the map.  It's a huge place!  However, I had a lovely and relaxing day, sticking just the greens.  They were so much longer than we're used to in Ohio.  One of the gondolas was about 15 minutes long.   

Some seasonal items, cherry and strawberry chu-hi!  (Chu-hi  is a very popular alcoholic drink.  Think flavored Smirnoffs from when you first started drinking alcoholic beverages, only not nearly as sweet.   

Sakura (cherry blossom) season is HUGE here.  And really, rightfully so.  They're absolutely beautiful.   Sadly, I was out of the country for the peek 2 weeks of the blossoms.  As you can see in this picture, a lot of the blossoms are already on the ground.  So think even more pink!  It's magical :-)  Good thing I'll be here another 2 years.

These picures are taken in Ayase, the neighboring town.  

Shortly after arriving to Japan, we started to hear about this crazy event, the Fertility Festival.  I think Wikipedia sums it up best: 

The Shinto Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り "Festival of the Steel Phallus"^?) is held each spring at the Kanayama shrine (金山神社) in Kawasaki, Japan. The exact dates vary: the main festivities fall on the first Sunday in April. The penis, as the central theme of the event, is reflected in illustrations, candy, carved vegetables, decorations, and a mikoshi parade.
The Kanamara Matsuri is centered around a local penis-venerating shrine once popular among prostitutes who wished to pray for protection from sexually transmitted diseases. It is said that there are also divine protections for business prosperity and for the clan's prosperity; and for easy delivery, marriage, and married-couple harmony. There is also a legend of a sharp-toothed demon (vagina dentata) that hid inside the vagina of a young woman and castrated two young men on their wedding nights. As a result, the young woman sought help from a blacksmith, who fashioned an iron phallus to break the demon's teeth, which led to the enshrinement of the item.
Today, the festival has become something of a tourist attraction and is used to raise money for HIV research.

 So yeah, there ya go!   Just when I think the Japanese seem so conservative in public, they have a penis fest!  We had heard that this was the biggest and best fertility festival (yes, there are many, but the main idea is the same) so we passed on going to others.  Unfortunately, we were not impressed with the festival.  I feel they could really make this a HUGE event, but the shrine isn't very big and they didn't shut down the surrounding roads, so there are soooo many people packed into such a small place. We were hoping to see the parade, but there were just too many people to get a good view.  There were penis lollipops but the lines were just too long for me to want to deal with as well.  Also, I was hoping to rub a giant penis so to guarantee I get pregnant sooner than later, but that didn't happen either.  Next year, we'll have to go to the one in Nagoya.  Several friends attended that one and it was much nicer (they had a big park,  penis popsicles, hotdogs, chocolate covered bananas, and so much more!)

Amanda, the penis, Me, and Judith

One of the tori gates a the shrine.

Operation Spruce Up the Front of the House has started.  Back home, I would say I'm trying to keep up with the Jones'.  Here, I'm keeping up with Nakamuras or Miyagis.  Lots of my neighbors have beautiful flowers.  They actually have grass though.  I don't, so potters it is!   I planted lily bulbs (yes, Stargazers!) in the fall and they just peeked out of the soil last week.  Can't wait for them to grow tall and bloom!  I have started morning glories and sunflowers as seeds.   There's a store called Flowerland down the road from my house so I got petunias and daisies.  And I finally planted the flowers I got for my birthday in a pot.     It's coming together pretty well.




Not too much else going on around here.   I actually start working again Thursday, but I am still not sure what hours, how many classes, how much they're paying me, or even what I'm teaching.  I was teaching Oral Communication, but the Japanese national curriculum cut the class.  Last I heard, they were hoping to put us in with the English grammar and reading classes, where we'll work with the Japanese English teachers. That sounds great to me, so I'm just rolling with it.  I'm supposed to go in and sign a contract sometime this week, before Thursday. 

Bryan's bike was stolen :-(    Probably because he leaves it parked in front of our house, which is on a busy road, without a lock.  Turns out a lot of Japanese people do lock their bikes.  Their locks are just smaller than ours.  They're just little loops that go through the back wheel, so until you match up the code, you can't drive the bike.  Fortunately, we found another bike for him at Yokota, the night before we flew out for our vacation.  It's a crazy beach cruiser and he's going to look hilarious driving it down the road since it (and he) are so much bigger than all the bikes and people here.  He loves it though, so I suppose that's all that really matters. 

Oh, and if you're on Facebook, perhaps you saw my many posts and pictures from our vacation!   I actually started working on blogging about our trip, so I'm hoping to get the first one posted later tonight.  I'm going to break it up into four different parts, Singapore, KL, Ubud and Seminyak. 

Take care!    Feel free to comment about how you've been loving spring!