October - So much nicer than September!
Hello, hello! Things have been busy, but I have actually been able to do a few fun things in October! On the first weekend of October we went to Tokyo for Canadian Thanksgiving at a place called Good, Honest Grub! It was really yummy…the turkey and mashed potatoes were excellent! We decided to make a day of it and wandered around Harajuku and the Meiji Shrine. There were two wedding happening and this time the brides were wearing totally white (well, cream) gowns and the whole family was being fussed over by the, um, wedding coordinator!?!? It was really interesting and the food was great!
Then, two weekends ago, we went to Hard Rock in the Ueno Station and then over to the Math and Science museum in Odaiba. I hadn’t been to Odaiba and it was very interesting! The whole city was built to look futuristic and it really does. It is kind of eerie because there weren’t many people on the island (that is right across the bridge from Tokyo). The museum was interesting, but I don’t think we are going to take a field trip there because there wasn’t enough to do.
Last weekend I had an opportunity to go to Nikko again. Monica (and 8th grade English teacher) loves it there and has been several times. She sent out an email and we ended up with 10 people who wanted to come along – two of them the new teachers who are great! I wasn’t sure if I could afford it since I Australia is going to be so expensive (I’m going to start teaching English to get some extra $$). Then, one morning last week, I was putting on my shoes and something made me look in the drawers of my little step-tansu. Shockingly enough, there were two 10,000 yen bills in there (about $200)!!! I couldn’t believe it!!! I don’t know how they got there, but I knew how to spend them! I signed up to go to Nikko!
So we rented a van and a car (so tolls would be free) and set off from the school on Friday after school. The ride to Nikko took from 3:30 to about 7:30 in yucky traffic, but we chatted the whole time and it passed quickly – especially since I didn’t have to drive.
When we arrived at our ryokan (Japanese-style hotel), the owner had made us a traditional Japanese dinner of fish, chicken, rice, and several other things that I couldn’t identify. I was happy eating my chicken a rice while everyone else sampled a little of this and a little of that. After dinner, we chatted for a while and heard several interesting stories. In fact, after knowing most of these people for more that a year now, I’m amazed at some of the things I didn’t know. Someone has to be sure to tell Josh that Molly grew up on a circus train…this will most certainly not surprise him, but will explain a lot! Her parents were very famous in the Ringling Brothers Circus and her aunts and uncles were in the circus too. Her first date, at 5 years old, was with Burt Lancaster. He was going to do a movie called Trapeze and said he wanted to spend a season with the circus first. So that, and other interesting stories, was shared until we decided to go play games.
I was vastly disappointed that everyone wanted to play Uno because it is a stupid game. I brought other games, but no one realy wanted to learn a new game. I succumbed and was shortly sorry as there were three kids involved and after being good all day, they decided to get silly. We eventually just gave up and went up to our futons and feather beds. I, however, couldn’t sleep and spent a long time wondering if I would wake my two roommates up if I got up to find my computer or iPOD. Eventually I fell asleep, only to be woken up and reminded, by nonstop coughing, that I am allergic to feathers and therefore feather beds. Ooops!
The next morning we were served rice, toast, yogurt, cabbage salad with the skinny cabbage like cole slaw. I’ll have you know that I actually ate that even though it was green! J There was also a hard boiled egg and a slice of ham. It was an odd assortment of things to have for breakfast, but at least there wasn’t anything offensive. Well, there was a packet of salmon and seaweed seasoning that we were supposed to put on the rice…but we didn’t and all was well.
After breakfast we set out towards Lake Chuzenji by way of the wiggly road with 27 curves on the way up. There was tons of traffic, but it did not matter a bit because the view was spectacular!!! We thought that the leaves wouldn’t be changing until November, but it turns out that this weekend is the prime time (hence the traffic). So we weaved and bobbed up to the gondola. We saw beautiful colors and ugly monkeys along the way. The ride up the gondola was fun and the view from the top was spectacular! We could see the Kegon Waterfall (which I visited with my friends from SRCS), and the lake above it! It was so pretty!!!!
After riding the gondola back down, we hopped in the car to finish winding up to the lake. Since we were hungry, I pulled out some pretzels and we started munching. Traffic was still bad, but now I really didn’t mind since I wasn’t driving anymore. Instead I got to lay around in the back seat, windows down, and inch along. The serenity was stolen when one of the kids from the other car snuck up to our car and reached in to grab the pretzels. I was about to object when Evelyn (sitting next to me in the back) and I both realized in the same instant that it wasn’t one of the kids…it was a monkey! With twin piercing screams, we realized that he had jumped up to stand on the window ledge. He reached for the pretzels in the middle of the car. He couldn’t get them, so he jumped on my lap, grabbed the whole bag, and hopped out of the car before we could even panic about how we were going to get rid of him! Hearts pounding, we watched as he took a pretzel, ate it, dropped the bag, and wandered away! That was when we noticed the momma monkey, with baby on her back, come walking up to grab the bag. She sat down and proceeded to eat. It was so funny, especially to the people in the tour bus behind us!
By the time we inched our way up to the lake, my heart had finally stopped pounding from the shock of encountering a monkey in the car. We parked and wandered along the shore of Lake Chuzenji. With the fall colors and bright sky, it was even prettier than it was in June! Some of the kids went out in the swan paddleboats and the rest of us just wandered around until lunch. We ate in a Japanese restaurant with huge glass windows looking out onto the lake and mountains.
After lunch we stopped for ice cream and then hopped in the car for a ride up to a waterfall. I was really excited that we were going to go to Yudaki Falls since I’d never been there. It turned out to be breathtaking! The pathway brings you right to the bottom of the falls and they are very close. The leaves there were all changing and it was so pretty that I decided I would make the trek up to the top of the falls and look around up there. The view was neat from up there and I spent some time by the lake listening to worship songs and praying…it was so awesome!
The trip from the waterfall back to Nikko was NOT awesome! It was stop and go…but mostly stop! I had to drive and it was dark, so the pretty views weren’t visible. UGH!!! It took 3.5 hours to go a distance that normally takes about 15 minutes. And the end of the ride was an anti-climactic stop at an Indian restaurant for dinner. I scouted around to find something more palatable and there were two good places – one Yakitori (meat on a stick) and one restaurant with a French name. I went back to let everyone know that I was going elsewhere and that I would meet them after dinner…I figured that I was safe since I had the keys. J Instead, I ended up with a dinner companion who had planned to pretend to like Indian food. So, Orpah and I went and had pizza which was really good!
During dinner we were chatting about DoDDS because Orpah is brand new to the system this year, like I was last year. In fact, as we were talking, we realized that we had been at the same interview in Memphis two years ago. She must have been sitting right behind me because we remembered all of the same information that we heard from Sara Riggs – the hiring coordinator. It was pretty funny to realize we were at the same place two years ago and ended up being hired at the same school!
After dinner we went back to the ryokan and pretty much went straight to bed since it had been such a long day! Breakfast the next morning was good and we checked out shortly after. Since the traffic had been so bad the day before, we hadn’t made it to the Tohogu Shrine or the famous Nikko bridge. We headed straight there and didn’t catch any traffic. The weather wasn’t great…overcast and gray…so I decided not to go inside. I was there with my friends on a similar day, so the pictures wouldn’t have been any better…or different.
Instead, I walked with Monica and Jill (both of them had also been to the shrine before and elected not to pay the $20 to get in) down to get a better look at the bridge. It was pretty and I decided to hang out near there and I actually started this blog while sitting on a bench nearby. It was pretty funny because there was a Japanese man standing behind me and he apparently wanted to practice his English. He bent down and started reading out loud what I was typing. Not something I would condone in the US, but somehow it seemed ok here in Japan.
After meeting up with the other group, we headed home. On the way, we had the bright idea of going to Outback for lunch on the way home. Unfortunately, none of us had any idea about how to get there from the direction we were heading and we got separated from the other car. We felt bad, but had a blast trying to figure out how to get to the restaurant. We did, eventually, find it and it was totally yummy! All in all, it was a great weekend and we laughed a lot! J
This weekend a bunch of us went to a play in Tokyo because one of the YMS teachers was in it. It was called And Then There Were None and it was adapted from an Agatha Christie book. The play was good, but my favorite part of the day was lunch in the Mexican restaurant near the New Sanno…it was yummy! Since we finished lunch early and it was a clear day, we decided to go to Tokyo tower. The view from the top was great, but it wasn’t as clear as we thought and we couldn’t see Fuji. Oh well…maybe next time!
I will add some photos later, but if you want to see them now, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennellinjapan/ and go through the Nikko pics.
Then, two weekends ago, we went to Hard Rock in the Ueno Station and then over to the Math and Science museum in Odaiba. I hadn’t been to Odaiba and it was very interesting! The whole city was built to look futuristic and it really does. It is kind of eerie because there weren’t many people on the island (that is right across the bridge from Tokyo). The museum was interesting, but I don’t think we are going to take a field trip there because there wasn’t enough to do.
Last weekend I had an opportunity to go to Nikko again. Monica (and 8th grade English teacher) loves it there and has been several times. She sent out an email and we ended up with 10 people who wanted to come along – two of them the new teachers who are great! I wasn’t sure if I could afford it since I Australia is going to be so expensive (I’m going to start teaching English to get some extra $$). Then, one morning last week, I was putting on my shoes and something made me look in the drawers of my little step-tansu. Shockingly enough, there were two 10,000 yen bills in there (about $200)!!! I couldn’t believe it!!! I don’t know how they got there, but I knew how to spend them! I signed up to go to Nikko!
So we rented a van and a car (so tolls would be free) and set off from the school on Friday after school. The ride to Nikko took from 3:30 to about 7:30 in yucky traffic, but we chatted the whole time and it passed quickly – especially since I didn’t have to drive.
When we arrived at our ryokan (Japanese-style hotel), the owner had made us a traditional Japanese dinner of fish, chicken, rice, and several other things that I couldn’t identify. I was happy eating my chicken a rice while everyone else sampled a little of this and a little of that. After dinner, we chatted for a while and heard several interesting stories. In fact, after knowing most of these people for more that a year now, I’m amazed at some of the things I didn’t know. Someone has to be sure to tell Josh that Molly grew up on a circus train…this will most certainly not surprise him, but will explain a lot! Her parents were very famous in the Ringling Brothers Circus and her aunts and uncles were in the circus too. Her first date, at 5 years old, was with Burt Lancaster. He was going to do a movie called Trapeze and said he wanted to spend a season with the circus first. So that, and other interesting stories, was shared until we decided to go play games.
I was vastly disappointed that everyone wanted to play Uno because it is a stupid game. I brought other games, but no one realy wanted to learn a new game. I succumbed and was shortly sorry as there were three kids involved and after being good all day, they decided to get silly. We eventually just gave up and went up to our futons and feather beds. I, however, couldn’t sleep and spent a long time wondering if I would wake my two roommates up if I got up to find my computer or iPOD. Eventually I fell asleep, only to be woken up and reminded, by nonstop coughing, that I am allergic to feathers and therefore feather beds. Ooops!
The next morning we were served rice, toast, yogurt, cabbage salad with the skinny cabbage like cole slaw. I’ll have you know that I actually ate that even though it was green! J There was also a hard boiled egg and a slice of ham. It was an odd assortment of things to have for breakfast, but at least there wasn’t anything offensive. Well, there was a packet of salmon and seaweed seasoning that we were supposed to put on the rice…but we didn’t and all was well.
After breakfast we set out towards Lake Chuzenji by way of the wiggly road with 27 curves on the way up. There was tons of traffic, but it did not matter a bit because the view was spectacular!!! We thought that the leaves wouldn’t be changing until November, but it turns out that this weekend is the prime time (hence the traffic). So we weaved and bobbed up to the gondola. We saw beautiful colors and ugly monkeys along the way. The ride up the gondola was fun and the view from the top was spectacular! We could see the Kegon Waterfall (which I visited with my friends from SRCS), and the lake above it! It was so pretty!!!!
After riding the gondola back down, we hopped in the car to finish winding up to the lake. Since we were hungry, I pulled out some pretzels and we started munching. Traffic was still bad, but now I really didn’t mind since I wasn’t driving anymore. Instead I got to lay around in the back seat, windows down, and inch along. The serenity was stolen when one of the kids from the other car snuck up to our car and reached in to grab the pretzels. I was about to object when Evelyn (sitting next to me in the back) and I both realized in the same instant that it wasn’t one of the kids…it was a monkey! With twin piercing screams, we realized that he had jumped up to stand on the window ledge. He reached for the pretzels in the middle of the car. He couldn’t get them, so he jumped on my lap, grabbed the whole bag, and hopped out of the car before we could even panic about how we were going to get rid of him! Hearts pounding, we watched as he took a pretzel, ate it, dropped the bag, and wandered away! That was when we noticed the momma monkey, with baby on her back, come walking up to grab the bag. She sat down and proceeded to eat. It was so funny, especially to the people in the tour bus behind us!
By the time we inched our way up to the lake, my heart had finally stopped pounding from the shock of encountering a monkey in the car. We parked and wandered along the shore of Lake Chuzenji. With the fall colors and bright sky, it was even prettier than it was in June! Some of the kids went out in the swan paddleboats and the rest of us just wandered around until lunch. We ate in a Japanese restaurant with huge glass windows looking out onto the lake and mountains.
After lunch we stopped for ice cream and then hopped in the car for a ride up to a waterfall. I was really excited that we were going to go to Yudaki Falls since I’d never been there. It turned out to be breathtaking! The pathway brings you right to the bottom of the falls and they are very close. The leaves there were all changing and it was so pretty that I decided I would make the trek up to the top of the falls and look around up there. The view was neat from up there and I spent some time by the lake listening to worship songs and praying…it was so awesome!
The trip from the waterfall back to Nikko was NOT awesome! It was stop and go…but mostly stop! I had to drive and it was dark, so the pretty views weren’t visible. UGH!!! It took 3.5 hours to go a distance that normally takes about 15 minutes. And the end of the ride was an anti-climactic stop at an Indian restaurant for dinner. I scouted around to find something more palatable and there were two good places – one Yakitori (meat on a stick) and one restaurant with a French name. I went back to let everyone know that I was going elsewhere and that I would meet them after dinner…I figured that I was safe since I had the keys. J Instead, I ended up with a dinner companion who had planned to pretend to like Indian food. So, Orpah and I went and had pizza which was really good!
During dinner we were chatting about DoDDS because Orpah is brand new to the system this year, like I was last year. In fact, as we were talking, we realized that we had been at the same interview in Memphis two years ago. She must have been sitting right behind me because we remembered all of the same information that we heard from Sara Riggs – the hiring coordinator. It was pretty funny to realize we were at the same place two years ago and ended up being hired at the same school!
After dinner we went back to the ryokan and pretty much went straight to bed since it had been such a long day! Breakfast the next morning was good and we checked out shortly after. Since the traffic had been so bad the day before, we hadn’t made it to the Tohogu Shrine or the famous Nikko bridge. We headed straight there and didn’t catch any traffic. The weather wasn’t great…overcast and gray…so I decided not to go inside. I was there with my friends on a similar day, so the pictures wouldn’t have been any better…or different.
Instead, I walked with Monica and Jill (both of them had also been to the shrine before and elected not to pay the $20 to get in) down to get a better look at the bridge. It was pretty and I decided to hang out near there and I actually started this blog while sitting on a bench nearby. It was pretty funny because there was a Japanese man standing behind me and he apparently wanted to practice his English. He bent down and started reading out loud what I was typing. Not something I would condone in the US, but somehow it seemed ok here in Japan.
After meeting up with the other group, we headed home. On the way, we had the bright idea of going to Outback for lunch on the way home. Unfortunately, none of us had any idea about how to get there from the direction we were heading and we got separated from the other car. We felt bad, but had a blast trying to figure out how to get to the restaurant. We did, eventually, find it and it was totally yummy! All in all, it was a great weekend and we laughed a lot! J
This weekend a bunch of us went to a play in Tokyo because one of the YMS teachers was in it. It was called And Then There Were None and it was adapted from an Agatha Christie book. The play was good, but my favorite part of the day was lunch in the Mexican restaurant near the New Sanno…it was yummy! Since we finished lunch early and it was a clear day, we decided to go to Tokyo tower. The view from the top was great, but it wasn’t as clear as we thought and we couldn’t see Fuji. Oh well…maybe next time!
I will add some photos later, but if you want to see them now, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennellinjapan/ and go through the Nikko pics.
