Kate's JET Shmorsgasboard

Welcome everybody to my blog dedicated primarily to my escapades in Japan, teaching English! Here you'll find photos and updates of my life in Sasebo, a city on the southern island of Kyushu. Hope you all enjoy!

Monday, May 07, 2007

My first stay-over!


Before I came to Japan, I heard from various sources that I would probably be invited over to people's homes quite a bit, particularly by the parents of students. This has been pretty much completely untrue for me, until last week, when I was finally invited over for a bbq! Albeit, it was to the home of one of the school's secretaries, but hey whatever. She also, however, invited me to sleep over. I've never been a big 'sleep-over' person in the first place, even with friends, so naturally my reply was a bit on the 'shifty-eyed, watery smile' side. Nevertheless I opted to go, and yes even to stay over, despite all of my ALT friends shaking their heads in the contrary.

The bbq was actually held at Y-san's (name changed) SECOND home, which is right on the water-front. I don't know what her husband does, but apparently its good enough to get you two houses! The main home is huge and gorgeous, and the second little house was incredibly nice! They were having some construction done on the steps, which were incredibly steep for some reason, that led down to the house. Needless to say it was a miracle I didn't break my neck.

The house was orange-roofed, embedded in the side of the mountain with a few other such homes around it. Facing the water was the 'back' of the house, with two large doors that opened up to a patio. The day we went was absolutely gorgeous, with a perfect temperature, low humidity, and low wind. This would prove to be a pain for the bugs later, but when we got there it was just lovely.

At first I just chilled on my own a little, while Y-san and her husband got ready for the guests that would be arrving shortly. Turns out it was just a family-affair, but they had plenty of food ready to go. I offered to help but was 'shoo-ed' out onto the patio. I read my book for a little bit, but it wasn't long before Y-san's neice came with her two children, Eriko and Akira. Eriko is my age, and Akira is 25. They both live and work in Fukuoka, she as a law secretary, him as 'salary-man' - his words (actually an IT engineer)! I really lucked out with those two, because they were both friendly AND could speak a bit of English, Akira especially. So I was saved from a night of struggling along in Japanese thanks to them - not that I wouldn't have tried, but I was happy for the alternative. After a while the same convos of "Where are you from?" "Isn't the weather nice?" and "How long have you been in Japan?" wear thin.

Before the rest of the family arrived and the food was ready, the three of us ventured down the (even steeper) steps towards the 'beach' area. It wasn't so much a beach as it was rocks-and-then-water, but having had a bit of experience navigating such terrain at the Lake Simcoe cottage I was able to (somewhat miraculously) avoid tripping and/or cutting my foot on a sharp edge.

The beach was littered in stones, teeny sea-life, and sometimes wierd odds and ends washed in. When walking after Eriko (who had gone off to see just where her mother was going ahead of us), I spotted something I have never seen before. I called Akira over and gaped, "Is that...dude is that a jellyfish?!" After some sufficient poking, we concluded that yes, it WAS a jellyfish! The pattern on it was really beautiful, I hadn't known before that they could look like that. We left it at first, but on the return trip to the house we decided to help it out, just in case it was alive (poking could not establish whether it was or not ;p). Akira scooped it up with two pieces of broken pottery that were on the shore nearby, and we dumped it into a small basin of water. Not long after we saw little tendrils moving the underside! Turns out, it WAS alive! We all crouched around it, watching it move a little, and all of a sudden I was 7 years old again.

By the time we got back to the house, satisfied with out jelly-fish adventure, Y-san's husband was grilling up tiny wee...clams(?) on the bbq. I don't know what they were, but you just picked out the meat with your fingers and ate it, and it was delicious! Eventually other meat was put on the grill, along with some veggies, and we all chowed down By that time more of Y-san's family had come, including a buddhist monk (the baldy if you hadn't guessed) and his family. In Japan, buddhist monks live basically the same as civilians - they get married, have kids, smoke, drink, etc. And boy did he drink! One of these days, I'm going to get a picture of the scooter-monks, I occasionally see around the city. To see their robes flapping in the breeze as they motor down the road always makes me smile, but I have yet to snag a picture. One day!

Around 8:30 a bunch of us loaded into cars and headed down to a different point along the water, that was directly across from Haus Ten Bausch (the dutch park), to watch some fireworks. We just caught the tail end of them, and I only got this one crummy picture, but it was really beautiful nonetheless.

After that, it was time for MORE food. By this point I couldn't believe how much had been devoured by these tiny Japanese people (I was a head taller than every single one of them I kid you not), but for them it was 'Yakisoba' time! Yaki, I believe, is 'grill(ed)', and soba is a buckwheat noodle (and one of the first Japanese words I ever learned)! You put tonnes of it on the grill, splash on some special sauce, mix in vegetables and put the nearest competant young person to the task and voila! Delicious yakisoba.

Most of the company stuck around until about midnight, when the last of them piled into taxis and headed home. I shared the guest room with Y-san, with her snoring husband in the double-bed in the main living area (aside from the bathroom there was only one other room, with almost all activity happening in just one big space). The next day we had a Japanese breakfast of rice-balls, strawberries, and salad (with mayonnaise as the dressing O.o) and then I got driven home. All in all it was a really great experience, and I'm very glad I got to go.

So that's it for this installement, but I'll update again soon with a post about the Arita pottery festival that Sumire and I attended on Saturday!

In the meantime, here is an album showing a trip I made with a couple ALTs to Kumamoto! Its mostly shots of the lovely Suizenji park. Enjoy!

Kumamoto Album