A trip to the coast

Henrik had arranged a water rich Saturday for us. We packed the car and drove for 1½ hours until we reached the Pacific Ocean on the east coast of Japan.
Here we were in the densest populated city in Fukushima, in a place called Iwaki. The place is famous for its spas, its reasonably priced sashimi restaurants, its beach and an aquarium with numerous kinds of fish found in the Japanese waters.


We started off at the aquarium where a gigantic walrus, garden eels and jellyfish startled us the most. To see all these fish, we went hungry for… yes, fish, so we passed the local fish market where fresh squids hang everywhere and found our way to a seat in one of many sushi restaurants, where we had to leave an un emptied plate for the first time since we arrived in Japan behind, as the portions where huge.


The plan was next to head for the marine tower and then to take a walk along the beach. As we rolled into a parking lot, the weather got grumpy and it looked like it would start to drizzle any time soon. We found it better to stay in the car for…half an hour. We can say we in that way have become veeeery Japanese. Often we pass young couple chatting in cars, middle-aged woman eating their bento in the car, men emailing by phone in the car while the wife is shopping – or like we did, people who take a nice nap in the car.

Half an hour later we woke up only to find out it was still raining, so we decided to do another very Japanese thing. We went on a vending machine hunt, which lead us to 7-11 where we bought each a can (!) of nice hot coffee for us to enjoy in the car, before we headed home to Koriyama.

Chigiri-e & Maki rolls

This week Barbara joined her second chigiri-e class. The picture she made shows a warrior’s helmet, but something got lost in translation (again), so this warrior’s helmet is pink… Anyone thinks it looks frightening? The helmet is one of the symbols of the Boys Day, the 5th of May.
The class also opened the door to the Japanese kitchen. Together with the chigiri-e group, Barbara prepared lunch. It is invaluable to get some local insider information about how to use ingredients like tororo (a kind of sticky yam), kampyo (a kind of gourd) and konnyaku (a kind of potato), - and Barbara can finally say that she knows how to make maki rolls. Now that also the cookbooks arrived with our ship freight last week, there is hope we will stop dining out, stop bringing precooked food home from the supermarkets, and start to face the challenges of the Japanese kitchen.

The best thing about the Chigiri-e class is that the handicraft aspect is added many other things. This day it was the cooking class. Next month we will drink the Japanese tea as made in tea ceremonies where you whisk the tea powder in the hot water, and in May it is the plan to go hiking in the mountains, to see if we can find some wild bamboo shoots for eating. The people are all very nice, friendly, open and happy to put up with Barbara’s curious questions and to share their culture with her. Also, they all carry a hearty laugh with them. The greatest laugh, Barbara discovered, are brought in front, when she acts like a parrot and repeats something one says in Japanese. They laugh and laugh and laugh. Probably not meant as a compliment. A little payback it is to make them say ‘rødgrød med fløde’ and ‘Henrik’ :-D. It always works.
At the end of the day, the whole group decided to make a bento (Japanese lunchbox) for Henrik, for him to try the yield of the day’s hard work.

Earthquake

This morning we felt our sofa vibrating, the dining table lamp was dangling from side to side and our closets were making strange sounds. Automatically we listened with tension to hear if we had made a huge mistake by putting all our crystal glasses on shelves, as we felt our first real, though relative small earthquake.

We cannot say it felt dangerous, but there is some sort of excitement to the virgin feeling of a shaking sofa beneath you. We got a vague feeling of being bystanders incapable of preventing it from happening and of being bystanders to the destined consequences. The only thing to do was to wait until it was over.

The Japanese do not use the Richter scale to measure the earthquakes; - instead they use the JMA scale, where Shindo 7 is the most powerful and damaging earthquake and the Shindo 0 impossible to feel as a human being. (Read more about the Japanese earthquake scale here.)
A little surfing on the internet led us to a huge earthquake that took place by the coast west of where we are living (see picture) just the same time as we felt it here. This earthquake was at the top end of the JMA-scale with a shindo 6 (and 6.9 on the Richter scala according to Danish Newspapers: http://politiken.dk/udland/article271548.ece), which means that it is impossible to move during the earthquake unless you crawl. The epicentre was located 353 kilometres from Koriyama, reducing the earthquakes effect to a shindo 2 for us.

Building a home

Imagine picking up, every single item in your home, relate to it and decide where it should live. You would be surprised how much history and how many memories each little item have captured for you. In the everyday life, the significance of the things tend to blur away on an unconscious level, but when you receive 126 collies of you personal stuff ( = nearly all your belongings) you have not seen for month and some cases years, you can not avoid to turn sentimental.

This Monday, all the leased furniture was removed so we spent the night at a hotel. Henrik had chosen Hananoyu. The hotel has several onsen (public baths), which we enjoyed both after dinner and again before breakfast. The men’s baths was located on the 10th floor with huge windows revealing a view of the snow-covered mountains. The women’s bath was on the ground floor, both inside and outside – and there were plenty of them. Ordinary pools, pools with natural stones, wood tree baths, very deep baths, and Barbara’s favourite, a huge ceramic pot, that only fitted one person and which was partly out side, so the snow landed on her cheeks while her body was gently heated by the steaming hot water. As always we stuck out of the crowd, so a private bath is nice.
The night at Hananoyu, was a break from reality and even though we first arrived there 7 o’clock in the evening and left again 7.30 the next morning, the time was plenty for getting this ‘holiday – away-from-it-all-pampering-feeling. Guess it is highly because of the baths.

The picture shows part of the dinner at Hananoyo...steak to eat with chopsticks!

Tuesday morning was a return to reality. Our ship freight arrived a little past nine and six hours later all 126 collies was opened and scattered around the apartment. One big mess! But a good mess though. Only some fragile lamps were damaged – and our Brazilian alcohol and French wines are missing, the rest was in good shape and it was a great feeling having our history in the hands again. :-D

Two days have passed since the stuff arrived, and everything is still a mess. We need to build shelves for the books etc, but we are facing a few challenges; like the battery for the drilling machine from Denmark needs several days to charge because of the 100 V in Japan versus 220 V in Denmark; how to find a new television set with an English menu system; and the language difficulties when we want to buy materials for building the shelves.

We hope the weekend will bring us a lot closer to the target. Henrik has taken the day off Friday, so by Monday we should have something that reminds of a home again. Including a guest room, should anyone wonder.

Weekend lazy

Another weekend just flew by. We stayed home for once and enjoyed the tranquillity of not doing much, but had a lot done anyway. Letters were written, delayed birthday cake made, new shopping centres discovered, video watched and Nintendo DS played.

In the city, we were, once again, amused by the numerous signs of Denmark around us. We can’t figure out, if they are there, because we seek them, or because little Denmark is quite popular here… It can’t be, can it?
So what can we add to the list...? We have found a Danish bakery “The little mermaid”, a display of the productions of H.J. Wegner in the furniture department, our national football t-shirt in the sports shop, Rosandal products and the year-plate from Royal Copenhagen in the chinaware assortment.

We also had time to visit the Planetarium, for the sake of the view. On the 22nd floor, you have a pretty cool view of the Shinkansen train as is speeds its way through the landscape emerging from under the building – a must see.

Sunday we slept in, splashed in the bathtub and then went for a walk. We visited a big Buddhist temple, not far from our apartment. All the pictures are from there. A local tried to explain some origami figures to us. In Japanese, of cause. Something with wings. We guess a bird? Later we could hear him tell his family about some Gaijins. That we understood ☺



We found a new favourite Italian restaurant/coffee shop and a French restaurant we are bound to try any day soon. And that's about it. It is still snowing on and off every day, so the cherry blossoms are still on hold.
One last shot of part of the temple:

The words actually start to look like words and not small pretty drawings

Japan has three alphabets; Hiragana and Katakana, which are the two small Japanese alphabets of 'only' about 2 x 48 characters, and Kanji, the Chinese alphabet with tens of thousands of characters.
We have been studying Hiragana since we started Japanese lessons in Brazil, which meant that we quite fast learned that again here, and this week we have almost learned Katakana.

To show you how Katakana differs from Hiragana, here are our names (Katakana is the official way of writing them, as this is the alphabet used for foreign words):

Barbara, written in Katakana: バーバラ
Barbara, written in Hiragana: ばあばら

Henrik, written in Katakana: ヘンリック
Henrik, written in Hiragana: へんりっく

Learning Katakana has been a very positive revelation for us. This week we have actually been able to read and understand several words in the myriad of signs always present in the city, like hotel, laundry, tiramisu and other non-Japanese-origin words.
The next weeks we will enjoy this, before we start to study the last alphabet, Kanji. Officially, you need to know 1945 kanji-characters for everyday use, but to be able to read a newspaper you need to know between 2000-3000 characters! Even the Japanese has difficulties reading Kanji. This will most likely be the challenge that we will never overcome...

Ganbatte kudasai!

Waiting for Spring

With all this talk about cherry blossoms, we thought the spring was just around the corner, but yesterday we woke up to icicles, snowflakes and minus degrees, and people saying that the winter does continue for quite a while here.


Having spent the last two winters in the Brazilian sun, the warmer weather is surely missed. It doesn't get better seing all the beautiful pictures of the Spring that has made its way to Denmark.
Please go to Nyhavn and enjoy a beer for us, or go for a long walk in the Danish forests. :-)

The good news is that our goods from Denmark will arrive on next Tuesday. We can't wait to turn our apartment into our own personal space.

Our first encounter with a ski slope, ever

In Koriyama the inhabitants have two favourite sports; during summer (and many times winter) they play golf, and during winter they ski. We have never tried either, but when some of Henriks colleagues invited us to join them on their yearly ski trip, we didn’t hesitate to say yes.

It takes less than an hour to drive to the resort by car, so to go there and back in one day is pretty normal, but we were introduced to a way better way of ending the ski trip as we will tell you about later.

The trip up to the Gran Deco resort was a nice ride through the hills of sleeping rice fields, and passing a beautiful lake with many groups of Mute swans that probably had found their way to Japan from Denmark, just like us. The snow fell gently outside, but only until we arrived. Perfect; Fresh snow, still wind and a clear sky. It was the perfect day for a skiing-challenge, for both us, and the Japanese-only-speaking-instructor. "How do we close our boots?", "How do we click on the skies?" The rest of the group went to seek greater challenges on the ski slopes while we moved on learning simple manoeuvres like how to break, how to turn and how to do both in one time. For a newbie that can be really difficult!














Just before lunch, the group came to check our progress, hoping we would be ready to join them on the real slope. We looked at the instructor. He meant we were up for the challenge, so we just needed to go the 30 meters down the beginner’s slope once more and we would be by the lift. On the way down the beginner’s slope, Barbara completely lost control. She luckily succeeded to lift up a 5-year-old Japanese boy in her arms on the way, before her skies would have knocked him to the ground. He got a huge chock and wept for several minutes afterwards. Barbara felt like doing the same, having all Henriks colleagues watching her stunt. They pretty quickly agreed that it might be better we stayed on the beginners slope a little more, before we joined them on the lift to the top of the mountain, so we went on a long lunch break, for Barbara to find the courage to hit the beginners slope once more…

Practice does pay of, and in the afternoon, when we got a new invitation to join the rest of the group, we went for it. The trip up, on the lift, revealed a beautiful view of the slope and the surrounding mountains.

The slope we were about to ski was two kilometres long.


We were told it would be flat – but that was only half the truth. Barbara’s effective self-developed skill of throwing herself in the snow whenever speed had gone beyond her breaking abilities became handy whenever the slope got too steep.

Some how it did get better, and the last kilometre down the slope went quite well for both of us. Starting the day without even knowing how to click on the skies, to actually being able to control both speed and turns in the curves, make us pretty confident that during the next three years with easy accessible ski resorts open from late November to early May, we will master the sport to a degree where we actually relax while doing it.
We hope.

So, what is the best way of dealing with the weariness and pain in your body after a long day of skiing?
Our suggestion must without a doubt be to take a bath in a hot spring (onsen) and afterwards enjoy a wholesome meal accompanied with cold beer and sake in the company of friendly people.
After driving 45 minutes down the mountain towards Koriyama, we arrived at the onsen, Hakkeien, located only 13km. from Koriyama.
We were all really tired and could feel the pain in the knees and legs, so before going to dinner, we entered the revitalizing onsen: http://www.hakkeien.com/bath/index.html
In this case, the onsen was public, which means that we went to the lady’s and men’s onsen respectively and shared the onsen with Henriks colleagues. This was yet a challenge that day, since the Adam and Eve costume is not what we usually wear in public.
Actually, it really doesn’t matter; When you enter the bath and immediately start feeling the healing effects of the water on your tired body that is all that counts.
Within 15 minutes, you feel so revitalized that you almost are ready to return to the ski slopes. Almost.
After the bath, dinner was set in traditional Japanese surroundings. The dinner consisted of an uncountable number of plates and included delicacies such as miniature steaks, fried mackerel, whole marinated mini-octopus, sashimi of tuna and white fish, cubes of smoked salmon and cucumber, different types of unknown Japanese vegetables and pickles, fresh tofu, crab tales salad, miso soup, deep-fried shrimps and asparagus, boiled egg, rice, pudding, and several undefined things. A colleague supplemented the feast with his mothers home made Mochi.
Mochi is a kind of sticky rice balls, very popular to eat on New Years Eve. They can be quite difficult to chew and several people loose their life every year as they choke on the rice ball. (A 70-year-old man, was once saved by his daughter, who used a vacuum cleaner to remove the Mochi from his throat.)
Anyway, the dinner was great, and in the companionship of Henriks friendly colleagues, an ice-cold beer (one of the best in our lives) and warm sake, life seemed perfect. The only insignificant hassle was to sit on the floor, with sore legs after the day’s activity, but that's part of the deal.

That night we gladly slept on the futons on the tatami floor in the simple, yet aesthetic decorated Japanese room, and the next morning we gladly had another dip in the onsen before our fish-rich breakfast was served in the evocative atmosphere of the restaurant. The Japanese hotel (Ryokan) really oozed of a down-to-earth and friendly staff that even served coffee for us, after we had paid our bill. With this level of hospitality in Japan, we can only encourage you to come and try!
See you soon.

Sakura

The Cherry trees are just about to start blossom and the excitement is in the spring-like air. Everybody are talking about picnics under the trees and the local supermarket hands out brochures about the cherry trees in the city. On the internet you find daily close ups of the blossoms for example in Tokyo, so that you can follow the exciting progress.
To see more: http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/indepth/seasonal/sakura2007/

We will let you know, what the fuss is all about, as soon as we have been to our first ohanami – the flower viewing parties held in the shadow of the blossoming trees.
The picture is a map of our city from the brochure mentioned above. The pink flowers are the cherry trees. The red box is our apartment’s location. The name of our road is Sakura Dori, meaning the cherry blossom road. :o) (click to enlarge).

See you under the cherry trees for a beer or a sake :-)

Newest buy

In the department stores you can find fashion shows (!) only for mobile phones and each of the leading phone companies throw 10 new models on the market in every collection.
This one we picked from Au's spring collection. It has a 800x480 high resolution display with a 170-degree viewing angle and can be used for television, web surfing (it comes with an email address), playing the preinstalled Final Fantasy or even for advanced navigating via GPS.
More odd is the barcode-reading functionality. Via the camera, the phone can scan barcodes on posters and in magazines and reveal or transfer web addresses, email addresses or phone numbers directly to the phone. Or, what about this one: By holding up the phone to a speaker – the phone is able via databases to identify the song and tell whatever album we need to buy... probably over the phone.
Of cause it also substitutes a credit card at some convenience stores and vending machines.
Unfortunately many of these applications are in Japanese, so it might take a while before we get around them all.
The beauty of the beast is the draw back. Phones on steroids, strong and heavy enough to carry all the newest revolutionary-technology-rocket-science-gimmicks have replaced the tiny elegant designs in Europe.

Hinamatsuri

Hinamatsuri means Dolls festival and is the day where parents set up beautiful doll displays as a manner of praying for their daughters growth and happiness.
The display pictures the emperor and the empress of the Heian period (794-1185) and their servants, besides smaller symbolic items such as different kinds of food, peach blossoms and miniature furniture.
A good colleague of Henrik invited us home for dinner this day, which gave us a chance to see one of these displays on close range. They are beautiful! It was also a great way for us, to be acquainted once more with the Japanese hospitality.

Earlier, we have mentioned that we thought our biggest challenge in Japan, would be to feel integrated, as the Japanese are known as reserved people with a very different culture. We must correct these thoughts. We feel truly overwhelmed by the Japanese people warmth and ability to make us feel welcome. Everywhere we turn, people are ready to go out of their way to help us, in a very polite friendly way that can only inspire us.
We do not feel alienated (except for when we look at our Alien registration card title) and any questions we might have are always answered with respect, even though they must seem silly to Japanese. We sense by now, that our time here in Koriyama will work out just fine.

The visit to the colleagues' house was our first visit as guests in a traditional Japanese home, so therefore it was quite exciting to see how it would all turn out. We were very relieved to find out that it was really relaxed and we had not needed to worry at all. We had a lovely, relaxed evening and really enjoyed the company of Henriks colleague and his wife. We had many inspiring conversations about travelling as they both seem to love travelling just as much as us, and they kindly gave us some good advices according to life in Koriyama (We can find the vegetable market in Koriyama now, yeaah).
We had a feast of a dinner with many different starters, a tasty meal of sushi and finally a delicious Hinamatsuri-cake. We also tasted some of the special small cakes traditionally eaten for Hinamatsuri: tamagomata made with egg and sesame and sakura-mochi which is bean paste-filled rice cakes with cherry leaves.

A big surprise was is, that we actually felt more at home at the colleagues' house, than we do in our own apartment. The reason was many Danish things and designs decorating the living room, and the fact that our own things are still wiggling on the waves towards Japan.

By the way, if you ever set up a display for your daughter during Hinamatsuri, be sure to take it down right after the 3rd of March, unless you want your daughter to marry late.