BBQ and Asamayama.

I don't feel like I can give a good update right now. I'm feeling quite stressed, planning and packing to travel to Vietnam at the end of this week. It's not all that bad, but my mind is reeling, and I can't seem to get any of the gears to stick. I'll just give a little update about my excellent weekend, in order to help explain some of the new pictures on my photobucket.
A new, young, female teacher invited Nigel and I to her parents house to have a barbecue on Saturday night. She's just graduated college, and is only one year older than I am. According to traditional Japanese standards, she's still living in her parents' house with her siblings. I think it's a little old-fashioned myself, but in a country that really puts a premium price on space, it does make a huge amount of fiscal sense.
In any case, the food was great, the people were extremely friendly, and beside having an awkward experience with a grilled shellfish (It was really gross; huge and chewy, and I thought I could handle it, until I bit into a pouch full of...shellfish bile? shellfish poop? I don't know...sick...I spit it out, much to everyone's dismay), things were really wonderful. And Nigel and I got to meet some other ALTs, and get to know our new teacher in a friendly way. I've begun to call her ____-chan, rather than _______-sensei, which is a good sign of building a friendly, social-equal relationship. I'm always a little nervous about attaching the familiar "-kun" or "-chan" to my Japanese friend's names, but I'm getting the hang of the practice, and am happy to use it correctly. For those of you not in the know, -chan is attached the to surname of female close friends (and really close male friends), while -kun is attached to social inferior males (in the workplace, etc.) as well as to young male friends, while -san is the formal "Mr." or "Mrs." that you're all familiar with.


And the next day, I was off the Gunma-ken and Nagano-ken (the home of some winter Olympics or other) with S-Lan (my friend, and polar opposite of the horrible L-San), Big Tree Lady (Her name is Japanese is basically "Big Tree" and she's really nice), and Nigel (my British arch-nemesis/comrade). I kept getting car sick, though I never barfed. Just the horrible sick-stomach feeling, rising and falling in my throat.
But, we headed to Big Tree Lady's cabin, which was modern yet tradiationally Japanese in style and size. I've grown to really enjoy Japanese archetecture, from the rural to the urban, from the mountain to the seaside. It's all different and all really interesting. It's very clean, airy and spacey on the inside (the more tatami mats, the better!), yet from the outside, it's often very stuffy and boxy-looking. I guess it's the dichotomy that interests me. And maybe it is symbolic of my experience in Japan; something can look so rigid and unaccomadating from the outside, but once inside, it's open and comfortable even if a little aesthetically different.
Well, anyway, we ate more barbecue for lunch on a porch overlooking a steep mountainside, and afterward went to a national park, where a volcano (Asamayama) had created a lava field in the 18th century. The lava-field was an incredibly surreal place, and there was, of course, a Buddhist temple at the summit of the lava-field, overlooking the surrounding valley. It was a little touristy, but I really enjoy any kind of temple and the placement seemed pretty nice.
The coolest part was that Asamayama just erupted two weeks ago! All day, I was wondering why things looked so foggy, but it was smoke and ash still being emitted from Asamayama into the valley. I took pictures!


This Friday, I'm off to Vietnam. I might have time to update once before then, but I make no promises. If not, Au Revoir. I will take photos.