Silver Week

Silver Week is kind-of a made up holiday. Apparently Japanese don't want to take vacation so the gov't made them take vacation! From what I've researched, There is a law: if there is only one non-holiday in between two public holidays, that day should become an additional holiday. The first (Monday) is Respect for the Elder day and Wed. is Autumnal Equinox Day. So in between they add this "citizens holiday". It's called silver week for the elderly (silver hair). Plus they have a "Golden week" so it works.

We went to South Korea for this week. We traveled to Fukuoka, a large city nearby in Japan and hung out a few days there. Then flew to Incheon, South Korea. We traveled around a bit, enjoying different things and seeing some friends.

FUKUOKA: This was a lot of fun. Kelsey, a friend picked us and David (another close friend) up in Oita. We drove (trying to figure out the right roads) to Fukuoka. We stopped at Costco. Yes, they do have that here - we just found out (not near us but...) Its JUST like American Costco's except Japanese writing on most.. but not all. The lines were JUST as long. They had samples everywhere. It was nice. We got a few things!
That night we went to a place called Canal City. Its a big mall type place that has many stories. It has a canal running through it.

We had a nice time there. We met some of David's friends, Sarah and Mary Margarette. They were lots of fun to hang out with. Because of the vacation time, we couldn't find a place to say so they let us crash in their hotel room. We had 6 people crammed into this little room and trying to sleep. Lol!

We ate near the river at these little food stalls. We had Ramen. It was SOO good!

The next day we met up with Tina another Oita friend and tried to check out the "Fish Market". BUT... when we got there... it was closed!
So, bummer. We were exhausted from walking all day so we sat and had a nice lunch. We had a really nice time with Tina. She is from Hong-Kong, but has lived in America most of her life.That night the three of us flew out to Korea. Many of the Oita Jets were going to be there but they had a different flight. But, Tina flew with us.













We got into Incheon late at night. and the hotel came and picked us up. As usual, the first thing you do after a flight is go to the bathroom. Erika and Tina were SO excited to find out that in Korea, unlike Japan, the bathrooms had REAL Soap, and paper towels! It was funny.

In pictures: (left) Tina pointing at a sign that says "Please Queue Here" and (right) Erika holding a paper towel.I was also a VERY happy boy because they had Dunkin Donuts in S.Korea!!! YAY!!!

We finally got some sleep and hung out in that area during the day. We went to China Town (lol) and then to a little fair/boardwalk type thing.

Tina left for Seoul (capital) and we went on to DaeJeon, where we met up with Laura, a friend from USF who is teaching in S.Korea. She was an amazing host and we had such a great time talking and hanging out with her!We went to school with her in the morning to meet some of her students. They were the most adorable kids ever! And SOO smart. Their English was VERY good! That day we biked around the city. It was great because the city "rented bikes" but turns out you didn't have to pay, nor give them your passport or anything. Just HERE! bring them back when you're done! I think I found out why they didn't care. The bikes were horrible. Erika's wasn't too bad but Thayne's; The chain fell off every time he coasted. He had to change it literally, at least 15 times. He was not too thrilled. That evening we met up with Laura (far right side of picture) and some of her friends for dinner.

The next day we headed to Suwon to see the "Korean Folk Village". It was actually a BLAST! They were a self-sustaining village: Grew crops, made silk, had chickens and other animals. We saw a couple different performances. Like balance beam artists, Korean folk dance, horse-back riders! It was fun. The coolest thing, I think for us BOTH, was watching a lady make silk. It was Strange and looked VERY complicated! (picture) We had a nice time. There were people that spoke decent English but by this time we were actually missing Japanese. We started to realize we actually know a decent amount. In Korean we could say "Thank-you" and that was about it!

SEOUL, the capital of Japan. We got in mid-day and went straight to our guest house. It was back in, what seemed like, the middle of no-where! But it was a cute place, very traditional and quite cheap! A lot of the other Jet's were staying there to. There were about 10 or so rooms. We met a guy, from Italy who is working in Japan, near Tokyo. He was very nice. We put our stuff in our rooms, took showers and then went to meet up with our JET friends. We had a hard time finding a place to eat. It seemed every place we tried to go, the prices were crazy! Even though outside it looked, from their signs, that it was cheap. Korea is a VERY cheap place. Food was pretty good priced: A good size meal would run you between 3-5,000 Wan (=3-5$). Clothing and items were also very well priced. I got a traveller size bottle of eye solution from Japan (12$) - SAME size in Korea (4$). Our money went a long way here. We ended up eating at a little stall outside. We had a seafood pancake (picture). It wasn't too bad. Then later we met up with Chloe (picture), an Australian - Jet from Oita. We stopped again, we were hungry, and had some vendor food... it tasted like... do be nice, poo. NO ONE would eat it. The Koreans next to us, who had the same thing, seemed to be enjoying so! We defiantly got scammed there (you do have to be careful of that). The Sushi Roll-thing Erika got was 2$. Chloe got some fried dumplings. I had the poo stuff. We figured maybe 8$ The lady came over and charged us 19$. UGH - if there are unmarked prices ASK FIRST!!! (our fault for being naive - In japan, we don't worry about that... we just KNOW it will be expensive-haha). We slept well that night. Cloe and Alex (another Oita JET) left early that morning (5;30am). Erika, Tina, and Thayne explored some more. We went on a tour of a nearby castle. Here we had a tour guide but she was.. mm... lacking in enthusiasm. So we didn't really pay attention and just hung out and took pictures.



Later we went and met up with Laura again. She came into Seoul to see some friends and to see us! We ate lunch and then went to this big street seller place. We looked around there for a few hours. We all bought a few things. Many stores had girls standing outside begging you to come in. They would be offering free items to come in. So.. we would.

After we got a free hug we had to head back to Incheon to catch our flight the next morning. We got in pretty late and then had to wake up nice and early to be at the airport.

Overall we had a wonderful trip!

JAPAN VS AMERICA... ROUND ONE!

****DISCLAIMER: Not all written here are not EXACT. Please take all references with the understanding that these are my personal experiences and outlooks. Also, some may be slight exaggeration: EXAMPLE "Everyone rides a bike. No not EVERYONE - but a good amount*****

So, in this post we are going to examine the differences in daily life between America and Japan.
Things are not HUGELY different. We have actually not had any trouble adjusting to life here. BUT, there are things that are different. Things we have had to try to adapt to and are getting to be second nature.

-- Obvious the first one I have to point out is Language. Japanese speak ... Japanese (hope you got that right!)
Many start learning English from a young age but it is very BASIC English. Think of.. spanish class in High School, in America. Many are required to take a year or two of a Foreign Language. But.. you never really LEARN it - yes, I can communicate but in spanish but I can't really hold a conversation. That's how Japanese are. They learn phrases. "My name is Yuko. I am from Oita. My hobby is soccer. Nice to meet you. See you!" Things like that.
When you go into a place, or need to ask a question we always first start with "Ego wa day-key-mas-ka" or "Ego... wa kari-mas-ka?" which means do you speak or do you understand english? (i wrote it how it SOUNDS not spelled.) Almost EVERY time the answer is "Ehhh.. CHOTTO!!!" (which means a little!!!) or they hold up their hands in an X and say "ehh... uhh... nnoooo..." So - we then try anyway haha. If you WRITE things out, they're more likely to understand but most is left to body language and charades.
They also have a different writing style. They use a combination of 3 different writing styles. Kanji, Katakana, and Hirogana. Kanji is Chinese picture symbol writing. There are between 5,000 and 10,000 kanji characters used in written Japanese!!! Hirogana is more of a cursive style writing and is based on syllables. Then there is Katakana which is a more simple for of Hirogana. There are about 45 symbols for both Hirogana and Katakana. It's very confusing because they use all three.

--Driving. Here in Japan they drive on the Left side of the road. They're driver seat is on the right side of the vehicle. Everyone ride bikes. We ride EVERYWHERE! we love it. It is still a bit confusing trying to cross the street - which way to look first. Very easy to look both ways then STILL almost get hit . Lol!

--Cooking. I can't speak for the whole country BUT from how most of the apartments are there are no STOVES. They DO exist but most common folk don't have them. They have a gas burner and a fish fryer. Many microwaves have "oven" capability, but its SO small and doesn't really work well. So, basically we don't bake. We eat a lot of fish. Fish is VERY cheap here. We can get 2 good size pieces of salmon for around 300Y. Which is like 3$. Easily 6-8$ in US. BUT beef is very expensive. it's around 7-12$ for a pound of ground beef... So, we don't eat that too often. Chicken is around same price as US - a LITTLE more expensive. Here they use EVERYTHING! People eat chicken heart, liver, skin and even cartilage.
Surprisingly rice is quite expensive but EVERYONE eats it at almost EVERY meal. Everyone has rice cookers. They don't understand cooking rice in a pot. They've just done it in a cooker since before they were born! Erika's teachers could not FATHOM that we cooked rice in a pot. They kept saying "Did it WORK? How would you do that? etc..." Forks, knifes, and spoons are not extinct. But most things are eaten with chopsticks.

--Money. Japan is a very CASH-using society. Most places do not accept credit card. No one uses credit card here (mostly). We use YEN here in japan " ¥ ". It is not exact but very close to 1¥ = 1¢. But they JUST use yen they don't have 100¢ = 1$.
So 3$ is about 300¥. or 100$ = 10,000¥. Not too hard.
Bills start at 1000¥. No smaller.
BILLS: 1,000¥, 5,000¥, 10,000¥ and more.
Coins: 500¥, 100¥, 50¥, 10¥, 5¥, and 1¥.

--People. I have to be honest here. Japanese people are SOOO much more friendly than Americans. Everyone (we have met) will do ANYTHING possible for us. Good example: Erika and I have started going to a chiropractor. A lady, Erika works with, has been taking us. We ventured out, on our bikes, to try to find the chiropractor one day. We... got a bit lost. So we asked a random guy on the road, walking. We showed him our card and said Do you know where this is. He put it in his GPS on his phone and then WALKED US - all the way there. He was like "OH!! I know, come!" It wasn't REALLY far about 5 min walk but still... Never met the guy. And things like that have happened before! I LOVE that. In America it's always about ME ME ME! What can I get from you what can you do to make ME happy. Here people genuinely care about each other.

-- Recycling. Most Americans say "WHAT'S THAT?" Haha - not really but so few do it. Here in japan it is INSANE!!! Everyday of the week (except Sat/Sunday) there is a different recycle day. One day is burnables (food, Kleenexes, TRASH stuff). One day is plastics, one day is PET bottles (plastic bottles like coke bottles), one day is paper, one day is Glass and Cans... you get the pictures. That maybe doesn't sound HORRIBLE - but here's the other thing. You buy a coke in a vending machine. When you're done, you "have to" remove the plastic label (goes in plastic), remove the lid (plastics), rinse it out, and put the bottle in the PET bottle bag. It's CRAZY! so you have to basically have 5-7 different bins or trash bags and... ugh - but we're doing our best!

Those are some main things. Ok - talk at you more soon - feel free to leave comments or ask questions :) Love yall!!!

PS - I know there are many typos and such - IGNORE!!!

It's Been A WHile!!!

Hey all, I know it's been a while. Sorry! I guess not much has happened since the last time we blogged. Nothing... extravagant. And we've been putting most our pictures and such on Face Book. So- for those that DON'T have FB, I apologize.

Well, things are going well. My job search (more networking) has started to show results. I have an interview Oct. 5th with ECC Junior. It's a English school program. (http://www.ecc.co.jp/htm/english/junior/index.html) if you want to read about them. The issue with this is it is only SEASONAL! So - its will be sporadic and very limited. I really don't know much about it yet.
Also, I have one English lesson starting up in a week or two. Another JET, Katie, knew a teacher at school that wanted her daughter (6) to continue English lessons. SO, Katie gave them my info. They're REALLY sweet people and the mom is going to try to find some other kids to join us, so that may prove to start some things rollin'!
Also, I have a friend that wants to learn the guitar. So, Ill be teaching him.
so... all in all, I'll have a few things in about a week. This coming week is "Silver Week". It's a type of holiday I guess. Schools are out and such. We are going to South Korea for the week. Should be a lot of fun! We fly out Tuesday night. We'll be staying with a friend for part of the week and then a guest house\hotel for the 2nd part of the week. We have a lot of friends from JET going to Seoul (capitol) the same time so we'll all explore and have some fun there.
I've also started a Japanese Language class. It's free, volunteer based. It's on Tuesday and Fridays. I've only been to two classes so far but it should help.

Life is good. Our typical week is: Erika is gone from around 7:45 - 16:45 (4:45pm) {Japan, like many other countries, uses the 24 hour clock). We then eat dinner and either watch a movie or go to town, meet up with some friends, walk around, etc. Then weekends we try to do a long bike ride to a nearby town or explore a new part of our city. Sunday we wake up and have church.

Typically we do sermon by podcast, which is nice because if we have any questions or thoughts we can stop and search through the scriptures. We sings songs (which is interesting with only 2 parts - we take turns singing lead so we can sing different parts). and then we spend a lot of time on the Lord's Supper. I have to say I have really enjoyed our "solitude" with the LS. In a large church I, personally, am easily distracted and have trouble concentrating for long periods of time with noise and babies and other distractions. So this has helped me, and I think I speak for us both, to be able to really focus on remembering Jesus. It's been really nice, BUT we do strongly miss the fellowship of others.

Miss you all - Im going to do another post about Life HERE vs AMERICA .. .now :)

Hi from Erika!!

Thayne caught me coming home from work one day!
I bicycle everyday and I love it!

Hello everyone! This is Erika adding to the blog experience. It’s time for me to say a few words about my perspective on life here in Japan. I’ve now been here a full month and in some ways it seems longer (in a good way!), but in other ways shorter. Thayne and I have done/seen/experienced/tasted so many things already, as you’ve been reading about. I guess aside from the obvious differences from living in Japan, I’m struck with amazement and admiration for the people. The genuineness and honesty I’ve experienced in people is so refreshing. As a whole, Japanese people are wonderful! They are so kind and eager to help and go far out of their way to lend a hand. They are extremely upbeat and positive- a word used often is genki, translating as healthy/happy/enthusiastic/vivacious/positive. Japanese people are also very concerned with following rules! Only once in the month I’ve been here have I seen a Japanese person crossing the street while the crossing signal was red. They wait patiently despite the fact that no cars are in sight. Also, garbage recycling in Japan is one of the most complicated things you’ll ever encounter! There are typically between 7-12 different bins for you to sort garbage into and at any establishment, public or private, people are very particular with where each item should be placed. At my school, there are 12 bins, and I have actually seen teachers walk by and when glancing into a bin seeing some misplaced items, have stopped and sorted the items into the correct bins. What is even more unbelievable is that I have seen this very thing done on the street, twice! Another interesting phenomenon we’ve experienced is the attitude of the youth. In general they are very respectful and polite. At the high school I work at, I’ve seen groups of girls and boys laughing and being loud and crazy as teenagers do, but when a teacher, or I, pass them, they bow and greet us. Thayne and I were in town one day, relaxing and people watching, and we observed a group of rough looking kids. They were dressed in sagging pants and baggy clothes, one had dreads (that was a first!), and they were hip hop and break dancing. They weren’t causing any trouble at all, but you would expect these kids to be the rebellious, rogue types. However, as we were watching them practice, we noticed them bow and politely greet elderly people passing by. We actually met one of the girls and spoke with her. She was so approachable and sweet! It was amazing to see that the ghetto, gang mentality does not have to go hand in hand with the hip hop and break dancing culture. On a side note, crime is extremely low in Japan. I came across an interesting statistic…29,569 gun related deaths in the US annually, while only 22 in Japan…

Anyway, we are settled into life here. It was surprisingly easy to feel comfortable and feel at ease. Our apartment is small, but we’ve rearranged it to suit us and we’ve put some finishing touches on it to make it ‘ours’. I think we’ve finally gotten it to a clean state…after weeks of dusting and re-dusting and cleaning away mold and who knows what else, as well as purifying the air, we now can live without constant allergy attacks. Cooking on a 2 burner gas stove and no oven or counter space has become normal at this point. Thayne and I are LOVING the food. Fish and rice and noodles, as well as various vegetables, are keeping us happy and healthy! A teacher that I work with, keeps me stocked with a weekly supply of cucumbers and occasionally eggplants.

I feel very lucky to be at the school I’m at. The Principle, VP and teachers are welcoming and friendly. There was an opening ceremony to start off the second semester after summer vacation. I was supposed to make an introductory speech for the school. I decided to make the whole speech all in Japanese, which I found out was a first ever for any JET they'd had. I wrote up my speech and one of the English teachers helped me translate it. It went well! From the stage I could see several of the student's mouths drop! My school has over 800 students and it was so interesting looking out over the sea of black hair. No variations, same skin and hair color. After the ceremony, the students all had to pass the dress code. No jewelry, no makeup, no piercings, no nailpolish, and a proper school uniform. That was pretty funny to watch. There were of course girls and boys that had pushed the limits and were reprimanded.

My Speech!

Checking nails...

I get along great with the 3 English teachers I co-teach with. Few of the others teachers speak English, but many try communicating with me regularly and between my Japanese improving and them learning a few English words, we get pretty far. I teach 14 classes each week. 10 with Ohara-Sensei, 2 with Yamanaka- Sensei , 1 with Ohata-Sensei, and 1 hour of English Club on my own. Students returned from summer break this week and classes have begun. They are very excited about me being here. So far in all the classes, I’ve been doing a introductory powerpoint slideshow on my life in Norway and the US, and the students have all been very interested and inquisitive. In my 10 Oral Communication classes, I am pretty much in charge of what is taught. I was told that about 70% of the curriculum will be on my sharing my life and culture and engaging the students in learning spoken English through these means. And by the way, their mid-term will be on me! The rest of the time will be dedicated to working from the small textbook. The challenge at this school is to make learning English interesting and desirable for the students, so the more creative I am the better. So far so good!

Ohara-Sensei and Ohata-Sensei

I constantly hear the word kawaii (cute) as I walk through the halls and have been told by girls that they want to be me, wish they looked like me; and by boys that they like me, my eyes are remarkable (pretty big word!) etc. There are very few foreigners around, so my light skin, hair and eyes are a rare sight. Their English abilities vary, but mostly it is poor. The English teachers also admit that their English is poor, which surprisingly is often true.

At the end of each day, there is a 15 min cleaning period. Students and teachers are responsible for cleaning the school. There is no janitorial service. I have my own desk and laptop in the teacher’s room. Of course it is Japanese, so I’m still figuring it out. There have been a couple students that have come down with Swine Flu, so it is mandatory for all teachers and students to wear masks all day….It is just the little white ones that cover your mouth and nose, but they are so uncomfortable! It gets really hot in there! And while I’m on the topic, my school likes to conserve energy and therefore does not use air conditioning much at all. The windows are kept open and it is miserably hot! Everyone sits fanning themselves and drinking lots of water. The air conditioner is sometimes turned on around midday for a couple of hours if I’m lucky. However, I just heard that next week we will not e using it at all in order to save electricity…..

Cleaning time! notice the masks...

I am looking forward to the after school clubs starting up. These are the extracurricular activities that the school offers the students to participate in. I will be joining in a few like Tea Ceremony, Flower Arrangement, Calligraphy. There are also sports clubs such as baseball, tennis, water polo, table tennis, soccer, rugby, volleyball, track, and basketball. They also offer bookkeeping, typewriting, computer, commercial marketing, brass band, broadcasting, school newspaper, and art. These are held on different days so students can be part of many clubs. My English Club is also one of the options. I have 6 girls.

We had our first earthquake last night around 10.30 PM. It was a 6.2 on the Richter scale, but was not too bad for us. The worst of it was in the ocean, below our island, Kyushu. It was 15 seconds of things rattling and the apartment swaying slightly. Pretty exciting!

Well this ended up being pretty long....but I haven't written anything on here for 1 month so no small dose of Erika! Lol...well hope you all stay healthy and happy and safe!

Love coming your way from Oita! :)

-Erika