Shaving

 A couple of notes on shaving.

 

      

    1)      I used this same razor for 2 years, when my dad came to visit in October 2010, I used the same razor, blade, and no shaving cream for two years.

 

   2)      These next couple pictures are of my face around 30 minutes after a straight edge shave.  Each time I got my hair cut, I also got a straight edge shave around my entire face (forehead, cheeks, outside of ears, etc)

   3) This next picture is my face about 30 minutes after a shave with my 2 year old razor. 

 

JLPT (Japanese Language Profeciency Test)

Ok, I had that last post sitting unfinished for like a year so I finally decided to just post it.  I apologize to anyone who read it, it was very boring.

Anyhoo, as I'm sure you are all dying to know how my test went.

I spent literally every day for the past two years studying for this test and....

Well, to be honest, I don't really care.

The results aren't announced until September, and I think I passed, but to be honest, if it turns out I failed, I won't mind.

"But Tom," you say, "if you spend 2 years of your life working toward something and then fail, shouldn't you be disappointed?"

Nah.  I realized before the test that I can communicate anything I want to get across in Japanese.  Sure my Japanese is not native level, but I am confident in my ability to say anything.

Can I say a sentence like filled with tough vocabulary like "my spark-plug just kinda stutters and doesn't ignite and the left axle connecting the rear tire to the fan belt is a little bent."  I mean, not that that sentence makes sense in English and it's a terrible example, but you get the point.

I can say "my car is broken, please fix my car" but I can't go into details about specific parts of my car.

So really, what does the test mean?  If I pass, is my Japanese suddenly better?  If I fail, is it worse?  Absolutely not.  I should have had a different goal when I began my studies.  A better goal would have been "be able to communicate with people in Japanese."

And in that goal, I succeeded.

Scallops and Japanese Pride

Japanese people are a very proud bunch.  Nearly every city no matter how small, has something that they are proud of and not afraid to show it.  For Noheji, we lay claim to the best scallops in the world.

Other than the fact that you can go to the local store and buy 50 giant live scallops for about 10 dollars, this has other awesome side effects.  Every restaurant in Noheji (that isn't a chain restaurant, even though most of the chain restaurants even have them) has a wide variety of scallop flavored dishes.  From scallop pizza, to scallop ramen, everything is fresh and delicious.  Also keep in mind, it's not just the body that you Minnesotans are used to.  It is everything.  The sperm, liver, eggs, little tough outer part, all are eaten.  Except on the scallop pizza, only the meaty Minnesotan-frozen scallop style parts are used.

And it's not just food either, scallops are what Noheji is famous for, so that's what you get when you come to Noheji.  Right when you get out of our train station, you see a nice big building with a giant scallop painted on the side.  Inside you can find scallop key chains and stuffed animals and the whole bit.  If you are daring, you can treat yourself to scallop flavored ice cream and scallop flavored anko.  It's fantastic.


And this goes for all of Japan for the most part.  Anyone who has been to Tokyo train station knows that they love to show off how proud they are of Tokyo Bananas.  And they should be, because they are delicious.

Japanese cities have each a famous thing, and the people are very proud of that thing.

Those of you that are my Facebook friend, check out my albums "Noheji" and "Heather's 4th Visit" for pictures of the scallop ice cream/anko/pizza.

Appi

 Ok seriously I've spend at least 10 minutes trying to get these pictures to line up nicely and I'm just going to try to direct you to the correct pictures.  The one on the left here is us before just starting our journey.  The pictures above are the from the mountain obviously.  The pics around are of the various sights.  Nothing really Facebook-worthy, but definitely memory-worthy.

 This is a very common snack here.  Fish in a bag.  Below is Kengo saying "Why is this stupid foreigner making a big deal out of eating a fish?  This is the most normal thing you can possibly eat."  After giving them a shot, they were a little salty for my tastes, but not too bad.  But there's something about eating bones that I just can't seem to enjoy very much.

Kengo is the worlds heaviest sleeper.  He fell asleep in the position for the entire two hour ride home, and even after we got back and Syogo climbed over him and his dad hit him several times to try to wake him up before I finally picked him up and carried him out of the camper.  Only when I put him down on the driveway did he wake up.

 Super good korean yaki-niku place on those top two pictures.  Breakfast was more natto and raw egg (my favorite) and the vending machine is the required beer vending machine on every floor of the hotel.  Beer vending machines are Japanese versions of ice machines in the States.

A pretty big earthquake struck as we were waiting for the gondola and it stopped for about 20 minutes.

Ran into some nicely dressed snowboarders and ended the night with a nice slice of macha cake.


Sorry this blog entry is not chronological, but this is my form of protesting the impossible image-organizing features on Blogger.

Quick Earthquake/Tsunami Lesson

I probably should have posted this a lot sooner, but of course I think that everything I learned in Japan is instantly known by everyone in the world.  I didn't know many of these things when I came here so I just thought I'd share.

In Japan, every building is built to withstand at least a 6.0 quake.  In America, you usually only hear of the Richter Scale, which tells the magnitude of the earthquake at the epicenter.  The epicenter is usually out in the ocean and the power quickly dissipates.  The March 11th 2011 earthquake was a 9.0 and Noheji was about 150 miles away from the epicenter and we only felt a 4.  The biggest was felt by Sendai at around a 7.0 and not a single building collapsed.  Of course there were several cracks in buildings, cooking pots get knocked off stoves and lamps fall over and cause fires and what not, but the actually shaking from the earthquake did not cause any building damage.

After earthquakes that center in the ocean, all that moving earth can sometimes create a massive displacement of water, a tsunami.  Earthquakes are generally nothing to be worried about in Japan, it is the tsunami that follows the earthquake that is what you should worry about.  That being said, if the epicenter was closer to land and some cities feel magnitudes around 8.0, that's a good time to be worried about the earthquake.

So here's what your should do when you hear about an earthquake in Japan and are worried.

Check out the magnitude,

1) If it's 6 or less, it's very scary, but everythings ok. and likely no big tsunami will come.
2) If it's in the 7+ range, check to see where the epicenter is, if it's near cities and they actually feel a 7+, then you can expect damage from the earthquake itself, but theres no risk of tsunami.  If the epicenter is in the ocean then you don't need to worry too much about the shaking, but you do need to worry about tsunamis.

As for me, I'm very lucky to be placed in an area that is on the ocean, but not on the east coast.  The east and southern coasts of Japan are quite dangerous but the north and west sides are relatively safe.  About the only time you'd need to worry about me would be if there's a 7.0+ earthquake with an epicenter in northern Japan, or if I'm playing hockey or baseball in Hachinohe (on the east coast of Aomori)..

I did not know this before March 11th, and when Wilbur and Beth were visiting, and we felt the magnitude 4 shaking, it was scary enough, but we didn't think much of it.  Maybe Wilbur knew that earthquakes cause tsunamis, but I didn't, and I couldn't understand the warnings blasted through the cities loudspeakers so we just went back the the apartment.

If I had been placed in Sendai, this lack of information might have killed us.  If we were in Sendai and just went back to our apartment afterwords, that would not have been a good idea.

So any of you who might ever be vacationing near an ocean sometime in your life and feel a major earthquake, head for high ground.

Hakkoda

This story starts at 6 o'clock on a Saturday night.  Shimakawa sensei picks me up promptly in his awesome camper.  Syogo (his eldest son) and I immediately begin an hour long marathon of Super Mario Brothers games on our DS's.  He's good, but lets be honest, he's 11.  In our hundreds of heads-up matches, he has yet to win.

After getting a pretty bad headache from playing a DS in a bumpy car for so long, we grab some ramen and hit up a cheap onsen in Aomori City.

From Aomori city, the trek up the mountain was crazy.  The light was too dark for decent pictures, but the way back I snapped a few.  The snow is piled up very big along the sides of the road.

Reminder: In Japan you drive on the left side of the road

One course goes along the road.  Very safe

 

We arrive in the parking lot at about 10pm or so and Pre-Japan-Tom would think this would be a good time to go to sleep and rest up for the next day of snowboarding.  But no-no, this is Japan, sleeping right away is out of the question.

Starts off pretty standard.  Fried chicken and some chu-hi.

And then BAM! Giant banana boat birthday cake!  I mean, I typically hate birthdays* and never told anyone when my birthday is, yet somehow he knew and brought a cake with all the way up the mountain.  Amazing.  However, the 6 was backwards and I made it clear to him that I was unhappy with his inability to orientate the 6 correctly.  Just kidding, I was speechless.

                     Of course, in Japan you eat cake with chopsticks  :)  
           

                                                                 
Sometime during the camper festivities, Shimakawa sensei randomly mentions that his dad just bought a new car and so he had an extra car if I wanted it.  He honestly offered it as if it was no big deal.  Unfortunately I don't have a license and the license-getting procedure in Japan is long and best case scenario I would only be able to use the car for a few weeks, so I turned down the free car.   

Then for breakfast the morning before skiing he brings wasabi** from his wife's family farm and some nabeyaki udon.  He brought a portable cooker and we ate like kings.  So delicious. 

We started off in front of that blue car (the people in the blue car also spent the night in their car), but that was too far from the entrance.  So we moved to the bus parking (right picture).

So before we even set out to go skiing/snowboarding, it was already a fantastic and memorable trip.  The views from the mountain really can't be captured by words or pictures.  Let's just say we were super super lucky to go on a sunny day, the mountain is almost always cloudy and snowy with miserable winds and snow.  Not much to say about the skiing/snowboarding itself, great views and super dangerous trees/holes everywhere, it was so much fun!

I will never figure out how to get pictures on this blog to line up the way I want, so I apologize with the haphazard layout, but here are a few pics.

 

 

 Grrrrr....This photo layout is so frustrating!! The good pictures are on Facebook anyhow so I shouldn't let the crappy layout bother me too much.  Haha I love talking to myself on this blog.

Anyhow, back to the story. 

We get done skiing and eat some delicious ramen and head to the most famous onsen in Aomori.  It's supposed to heal wounds since there's a lot of sulfur in the water, but it really just ends up smelling bad and hurting if it gets in your eyes.  Aside from that, there's nothing better than a hot bath after a workout.

Some pics from the hotel:

 I don't mean to brag or anything, but I'm pretty proud of my ability to make those two pictures show up side by side.  That is much more difficult than it looks.  The picture on the left is the unassuming entrance to the bath.  As a sign of the honesty of Japanese people, you pay 500 yen (about 6-7 dollars per person) and you're just supposed to put the money in a box there at the entrance.  Nobody standing there to check, just an honor-system entrance.  The picture on the right shows some lovely slippers lined up at the hotel.  I have come to enjoy the clean floors of Japan.

So obviously no pictures of the 100 naked guys in the the onsen, but be assured that the water felt good.  Here's the parking lot of the bathhouse and lots of snow.

We got back to his house, the eating started at about 5pm and didn't stop until about 2am.  The first course, of course, was finishing the cake from the night before,  Here you can see the banana in the middle and see it's deliciousness a little more.  At this point I was still upset about the backwards 6.

After that, the actual dinner with some healthy goodies.

And just when I thought it couldn't get any better.  Something that has never happened in my life happened.  I got a SECOND birthday cake!  I could truly have my cake and eat it too.  This time I was happy because the 6 was correctly orientated. 

Then round 4.  Left side is spicy kimchi miso udon.  Unreal.  Middle is snail, scallop semen, and scallop eggs.  Also unreal.  Right side is the man, the myth, the legend chomping down some snail.

--Note those three pictures above are lined up flawlessly in the blog editor thingy, but they show up crazy here, I'm sorry.

Breakfast the next morning, the usual rice/veggies/wasabi/meat/egg/miso soup.  Then dessert was dried wild mountain grapes from Mt. Hakkoda , yogurt, and among the best strawberries ever.  In America I'm not sure if I was unaware of multiple varieties of strawberries or if there really is just one choice, but regardless, there are several varieties in Japan, in the right side picture, the more bright red ones are a little sweeter and the more orangeish ones are more sour.  I like the variety.  After the strawberries, I finally forgave him for having the 6 backwards in birthday cake number 1.

In closing, I just want to mention that this wasn't all that unusual of a weekend.  Substitute hockey for skiing and random foods from Aomori instead of birthday cakes, and you have a very typical weekend with Shiimakawa sensei.  He really is this awesome.  Always.

Can't wait to do things like this with you folk(s?) reading this blog!

Heather has informed me that it is not obvious that I talk about the backwards 6 with lots of sarcasm and she thought I was actually mad about it.  In case any of you have a weak-sarcasm-detector like Heather, I just want to state for the record that at no point in my life was I ever upset or disappointed in the backwards 6 in birthday cake number 1.

*I'd rather celebrate times where I work hard and achieve something than celebrate the Earth returning to the same location relative to the sun as the day I was born.  But whatever.
**Don't confuse this with fake wasabi-paste.  The stuff in the jar is real wasabi.  The green paste at Japanese restaurants is just horseradish with green food coloring.