Hiatus

its been awhile, but nothing exciting has happened in the last two weeks. japan is terrible, im bored, and i want mommy.

sniff sniff.

HA! the truth is that so many things have happened in the last two weeks, i'm most likely to forget half of them, but i'll give it a shot:

In this edition:
1.Christmas
2.Osaka
3.New Years Eve
4.Japanese TV
5.Hiroshima
6.Miyajima
7.Etc.

Christmas. Honestly, the one time ive been 'homesick' since I've been here. This christmas eve was the first time i have ever been away from my family and i cant tell you how much i missed the food, the pine smells and the homemade pumpkin pie. So to counter my feelings of homesickness I decided to cook up a feast at my vacant apartment for some friends(if you recall, i have the place to myself for at least another week). on the menu: a whole roast chicken (cold because i dont have an oven or microwave), garlic mashed potatoes, cranberry salad, edamame(boiled soybeans in the pod which are sprikled with salt and eaten much like a pistacio or peanut. YUM!), broccoli, cheese and crackers, coconut rind dessert, and, drum roll, nachos.
all together it was a very filling meal, and all present, my japanese friend Kiyoe, my bostonian friend Niamh (pronounced like Kiev), and myself were bloated by the end of it. Gifts were given, and i gave out the 100 yen christmas pack that included rice cakes, chips, a small piece of chocolate and a model tank! no kidding. it wasnt home, but it really made me appreciate what i have and my family.

Osaka: on december 30 i traveled via Shinkansen (bullet train) to the third largest city in japan, osaka to tour the west and to visit fellow nova employee kristy. sidenote: the bullet train was fast, but way too expensive. a nice experience but i probably wont do it again. osaka is considered the boston to tokyo's newyork. Its actually much like a smaller tokyo but with a lot of foreigners. the company i work for, nova, was established in osaka. So truth be told, there isnt a huge amount to see. there are some cities close by(nara, kyoto,kobe) , which i didnt go to, that can make it a good base for travelers. The sites that i did see included osaka castle (a nice castle in the middle of town, destroyed and rebuilt many times, so now its made of ferro concrete), the minami shopping area (if you have some crazy neon views of japan,this area is one of them), the osaka aquarium (which houses a real whale shark, AWESOME!)and the most prominent shrine in osaka Sumiyoshi Taisha. for more info, go here: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2157.html

osaka is also famous for takoyaki, those octopus balls, which were great!

When in rome do as the romans do. when in japan on new years eve, do as the japanese do, which is go to a shrine and pray. Somehow, even though there was a large party with about 30 people going on, i convinced about 20 of them to go to the shrine with me (mainly because i didnt know how to get there). So onward we traveled to the sumiyoshi taisha shrine, and met with thousands of japanese. it was fun. at midnight all the people throw coins to the temple, so since we were in the middle of the crowd, we were pelted by dozens of 1 yen pieces (very light, so i'm ok). afterward we all got lost, my friend kristy dropped her phone in a toilet, so no one could contact her, i walked around for two hours with becky(kristy's flatmate) looking for the exit playing carnival type games along the way, talked to many japanese people and ate. alot. (maybe i drank some too, sake flowed freely) A good new years experience, one i surely wont forget.

Phew, only halfway done. sorry everyone, these stories only include about 15% of the story, i just cant type a novel in this short internet cafe time.

Japanese TV. this one will be short, but hopefully you can visualize, which will be funnier than a full explanation. new years day everything is closed, so japanese people sit at home, eat, relax and watch tv. Tv snipets (not a show, just about a 5-20 minute clip highlighting weird ars stuff) included: large breasted women in a contest to see who could fit the most UNDERNEATH their boobs (items included cans of beer, hotdogs and apples), a man who was forced to eat seaweed for two weeks and taunted frequently by his friends, kids driving their parents cars while the parents sat in the passenger seat hancuffed so they couldnt steer, little kids from nigeria nd northern canada (think eskimo) training to compete against each other in sumo competition, and countless others. this kind of crap is on all the time, ill tape it sometime and send it home.

hiroshima: humbling. after the new year kristy and i traveled to hiroshima (now a thriving city with over a million people)i couldnt beleieve that i was standing just a few meters from where the first atomic bomb was dropped. i didnt know how to feel, because less than 60 years before this place was literally on fire, killing over 150,000 in a few seconds. despite the massive destruction and loss of human life, the actual range of the destruction was much less than i had envisioned. hiroshima was chosen in part because the entire city center was within a 3 km area, the bomb hit almost in the middle of this area (exploding 600 meters above the ground) yet SOME people just 850 meters away survived (they did have radiation sickness but they lived for a while after the bombing). I cant really describe it. only a few (literally like 3)buildings in the city area survived, one of them is the a-bomb dome which is a shell(no one inside survived as it was just a few meters from the nomocenter). overall, while humbling and horrific, hiroshima is a good destination to see the efects of war. (two sidenotes: the people of hiroshima are now known throughout the country as some of the most peaceful in the world, writing countless letters every year to countries that have nuclear weapons to dismantle them. and two, while the devestation in hiroshima was terrible, today's bombs are over 100 times more powerful. think about it.

Miyajima: i cant write enough to give this small island about 30 minutes from hiroshima the credit it is due. Its beautiful (voted as one of the three most beautiful places in japan), sacred, quiet, and great for a long day trip. The island has mountains, monkeys, tame deer (which reach into pockets and eat things. where the heck did my map go?), and an awesome shrine. see: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3401.html

the Itsukushima shrine is built over the water, so when the tide comes in it looks like its floating. the Torii gate is also several meters off the shore, making it an amazing site. we spent the day on the island, shopped, went to the top of the mountain which offered panoramic views of the area, and fled the killer deer.

Etc...
-Is it a fashion faux pas to wear a faux leopard fur hat while wearing a faux zebra skin jacket? do the hat and jacket ever fight?
-sumo starts in a few days. YES!
-work is ok, but i havent worked much in the last week and a half.
-the youth 18 pass in japan is awesome! for 11500 yen you get 5 tickets, each worth one full day of unlimited rides on a JR line. the catch: you can only buy them three times a year
-im broke again
-no weird foods this week.
-i bought bull durham last week, ive now watched it 4 times. good considering that ive only been home two days since i bought it.
-why bull durham? it was better than the postman.
-i actually dont mind naato.
-it is the year of the cock by the chinese calendar
-im tired

take care.
scotto san