Spring is ON!

Shichi-Snow-he

I've found myself feeling rather restless these last few weeks, the wether doesn't always lend itself to walking around outdoors. However, today was rather nice, so I took advantage of it and decided to play around with my new fave toy.

Here's another sampling of where I've been living the last year and a half.

I went out for the evening and lost my driveway one night.

I didn't really share much in that last post... so here's a rambler for ya!

**Originally started January 29th**

Goooooooood morning everyone!

I hope this post finds you well. A thousand pardons for not keeping up with this a little more, but, I suppose that's a good indication that I have been doing things instead of just blogging. Huzzah! I can't believe that it's just about February. Holy smokes! I am looking forward to next month for reasons that I shall post about afterwards... probably in April if I keep this pace up. Bwahahahaha.

I've been doing lots of reflecting...

...and I think this quote sums up where I'm sitting right now:

"We all change. When you think about it, we're all different people. All through our lives.

And that's ok. That's good. You gotta keep movin'.

So long as you remember all the people that you used to be." - The Doctor

Christmas Baking!

Merry Christmas, lads and lasses.
I must confess I haven't been up to much that I deem blog-worthy lately. I've been going to work dinners, making weekly trips to the post office taking long evening walks before the winter winds begin to howl. I feel that I must take advantage of the nice weather while it lasts. I've been really lucky so far with how nice the weather has been... I fear that mentioning it will jinx it and it'll be nothing but heaps of snow for the next 6 months, but... I'll take that chance right now.

七戸町秋祭り (Shichinohe town fall festival) year 2: electric boogaloo.

The fall festival seems to be the largest one that this town celebrates, it lasts about 4 days and everyone except for my office and the supermarket seems to shut down early/for the weekend. Not that surprising given how many farmer's fields there are all over the place. Hooray for a good harvest!

七戸中学校大運動会

That's Shichinohe Junior High School Field Day/Sports Festival

A couple weeks ago I was asked by an assistant teacher if I would like to attend their 'undoukai'. My first question (as usual) was 'what's that?'. The teacher then proceeded to look it up in her electronic dictionary.
'Field day'. Ok, but what *is* it?

She got a panicked look on her face and fetched the English teacher for some assistance.

Eventually I get a little snapshot of what's involved... "The kids run races and their parents come by and watch. Please wear something with your team colour on it" Although I still had no idea why my schools needed to rehearse a field day...  I try to explain the Canadian ones I'd been to, how they're much more laid back, there's no marching, it's not on a Saturday... it's just an afternoon in June where we run around outside. I seem to recall some days spent in the park with hot dogs for lunch, but I don't think that was track and field related, I think that was just 'it's too nice to stay inside these schools without a/c, let's get the kids to run around outside'... or else it was girl guides, I honestly don't know at this point. Anyhoo, point is, as usual, Japan does it up with a lot more pomp and circumstance than we Canucks.

Flowers and Pizza (and a bonus treat! Woo hoo!)

Spring seems to have arrived in Shichinohe. Hoooraaaaaay! I'm sure it will go by quickly, so I figured I should take advantage of the fact that it wasn't raining and see how the flowers were doing. I had tried to get out a couple times last week, and I got rained on each time. Once it was a freaking thunderstorm!

April Adventures Across Japan Phase 3: Profit!

Aomori Day 6

Two words:

Doctor Who.

April Adventures Across Japan Phase 3: Profit!

Aomori Day 1: Shichinohe Sights

There's a town right behind me, I promise.

April Adventures Across Japan Phase 2: Train Tracks to The North

Another early morning and we made out way to Sendai station and completed our trek to Aomori via rail. It was a lot more scenic after Sendai, with the mountains making appearances and more rivers near the tracks. I think I belong up north, as it really felt like I was going home. Calming and peaceful.

Oot and aboot this little town in Northern Japan

The first thing I bought when I got to Tokyo (well, other than food, of course, but that's *long* gone) was a camera. Now that the weather is changing for the warmer and I can work on shaking this cabin fever, when the weather is favorable, I make an effort to explore the town I live in.

Welcome to Shichinohe Machi (七戸町）

View Shichinohe-machi, Aomori-ken, Japan in a larger map 七 = shichino= seventh 戸= he (pron 'hey') = door/gate 町= machi = town
For further explanation of the name, check out the history of Gonohe's name on Wikipedia. I presume they are all part of the same history and subsequent naming. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I can't find much information myself... There are two National Highways (国道= kokudou "country" +  "road", blue triangle signs) that go through town, the #4 and the #394. The #22 and #118 are Prefectural Roads (県道= kendou "prefecture" + "road", blue octagons . The streets have no other names and I'm still trying to figure out how folks find their way around without Google maps or other GPS capabilities. If you click on the different blocks on Google maps, it will highlight them for you and you can see that they are just arbitrarily shaped. Hopefully one day it will be explained to me, but until such a time, it's just weird. You have no idea how excited I was when I finally figured out where my home was and how to walk to the grocery store without getting horribly lost. I think the set up has to do with the fact that it's an old samurai town and if you don't live there, you're not supposed to be able to find your way around. As you can see from the map above, there is no set pattern, no grid, no main road that goes right through... it was very strange and disorienting for me when I first arrived. Whenever it's a nice, sunny day, I get the urge to explore...   Points of Interest:
Castle Ruins, Tenno Shrine(s), Temple(s), Art Gallery (featuring lots of lamps... apparently)

Amenities: Post office, grocery store, drug store, supermarket, shinkansen station, banks, gas stations, schools, hospital, public bath and a library. There's a 'shopping district', about a dozen hair salons (!? seriously, they're like... weeds!).
There should be a bunch of pegs and explanations of locations on the map, if there isn't, lemmie know and I'll fix it. :)

しちのへホワイトバトル!!!

L-R, B-F: Coach Adam, Mizuki, Simon,  Adam, Peter, Meena and Chris

It's an unwritten rule in Japan... anything you can do can be organized into a large event where you can compete against other folks (there must always be a clear winner, even if it's JHS students singing the school song, they can be judged and awarded some sort of prize). "CC, you're talking crazy", you must be thinking. I assure you, loyal reader, I am not...

Welcome to the しちのへホワイトバトル (Shichinohe White Battle) a tournament style snowball fight. There were two ALT teams this year, we were the ナンブボンバス (Nambu Bombers), a proud team of 7 ALTs from Towada, Shichinohe and beyond!

Halloween/Samhain

Wowee, the end of October already? I was invited by David to join up with his evening adult English class to participate in their Halloween Potluck party.

Hmmm...

One of my cousins, who's pregnant with her first child, posted something on facebook that made me realize what a great day I'm having.

She posted a picture that said "I'm making a human. What have you done today?"

First of all, the typhoon that had been coming closer and closer all weekend ended up going around us. So I did not get washed away, nor did I need to take a canoe to work.

As I rode my bike to work this morning, I was greeted by this sight:

Ain't nothin' like comfort food...

I've been feeling a little run down and blah the last couple days... so I've been taking it easy, and decided yesterday that if I wanted to make sure I kept this cold at bay, I'd better have some chicken soup.

I've been able to find corn (!) soup, and cream of chicken (?) soup, but no straight up chicken soup to which I could add noodles to.

So here it goes from scratch:

mmmmm simmering pan fried chicken...
Simmered this for about 2 hours, then I just couldn't wait any longer.

Welcome party Barbecue!

Random sunset in Shichinohe just down the street from my apartment.

 I didn't take many pictures... mostly because folks were pretty schmammered by the time I got there. I did get this nice shot of the view from the hill by the cabins we stayed in. I think I will go back there... maybe to rent one of them myself with some friends just to get out and have a little fire or something. We shall see. It was a much nicer place than I had anticipated.

Friday afternoon... It's warm, but not warm enough for a/c... I knew I should have worn a skirt today...

IT'S TOO HOT FOR PANTS! Well, not quite. Anyway, I'm finding it too warm to concentrate on anything terribly productive, so... I'm gonna start another post that I will update as we go along... (well, I'll tag subsequent posts as "NATURE" so you can follow along... )

NATURE!

I hope to see lots of neat stuff this coming weekend (but I'm not gonna tell you where I'm going in case the weather is shite and all I get is rained on!)

Here are some things that I've found worth noting so far...

While heading to the exit of the Hirosaki castle grounds, I spied this one branch of red in among the green...

These leaves just could not wait to get their red on...

The moment you've all be waiting for...

... with baited breath....


... shivering with... anticiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...





...






...





...pation.

Aki Matsuri (lit: Fall Festival)

Hey folks, the Hirosaki weekend posts took a week to get up cuz of all the classes I had (still no internet at home except for on the iphone... which I can't make into a hotspot unless I jailbreak it... it may come to that...)

Anyhoo, ever since going back to Shichinohe, I joined Tim and David (fellow ALTs, but both are from California) and started some informal Taiko drumming lessons in the Shinmatchi neighbourhood of Shichinohe. Good times were had (I shall add a picture of the shed we were practicing in, I just forgot to load it on the flash drive) a super busy weekend resulted from it!

Thursday, September 6th, all the neighbourhoods gathered in town and competed (I'm not sure what we were competing for... but we got lots of cheers for being the group with the most gaijin... however that didn't get us enough points to win. Maybe next year.) After the winners were announced, a much better taiko group performed and put us all to shame.

Suited up and ready to smack some skins!