Spring!

Welcome back! A lot has happened since you last checked in and hopefully I can remember enough to give it all justice.

We had a strange Friday holiday back in March. I say strange because while most people got a three day weekend from it, I work on Saturdays. Therefore, for anyone else it would be the equivalent of having a Thursday off and not the Friday. Anyway, Cheryl came down to Fujisawa for that weekend and we turned Friday into Foodday. We started off the day with a trip to Chinatown in Yokohama where we strolled up and down the main fare buying and trying different foods. The lines were long, but worth it. The best one was definitely the strange dumpling-things (Neither of us knew how to read the name) that were fried on the spot and filled with....well, I believe it was pork. After Chinatown we made a quick trip to the Pokemon Center in Yokohama because Cheryl hadn't been there yet. Then we bought some bubble tea and killed some time while discussing what to do for dinner. Fortunately I remembered Rodney saying something about a ramen museum in Yokohama and thanks to technology was able to look it up on my phone pretty easily. So that's where we went. Admission was 300 yen, and when you go into the museum, it's set up like a small piece of an old city street in Japan, with the old wooden signboards, stone paving and everything. Then there are a bunch of ramen shops brought in from all over Japan. The best part: you can order mini bowls so that you can try multiple different kinds in one trip to the museum. Cheryl and I tried some regular ramen, and then tonkotsu (pork bone) ramen. While those settled we watched a "street" performer who did a bunch of yo-yo tricks and the like. We topped off the night with a bowl of tsukemen (dip ramen, where the noodles are served cold with a hot bowl of thick soup). I think the winner of the night was the tonkotsu ramen, with the tsukemen coming in at a close second.

Me eating the dumpling things

The strangest ice cream ever...
...OK, so it's not ice cream. It's a fried doughy shell filled with red bean paste

The inside of the ramen museum

Me with my tonkotsu ramen

The following Monday I went with my Japanese teacher and her other students to Kamakura. It was a good opportunity to meet her other students and for all of us to practice our Japanese. We walked around Hachimangu shrine and then the Great Buddha. After that we hopped on a bus and went to Rodney's girlfriend's parents' soba shop. There we got to watch her dad make the noodles from scratch (starting all the way from the grains). Then we got the full course meal, starting with a paste made from the grain, then tamagoyaki (eggs that have been fried to kindof an omelette-like texture and slightly sweetened). After that was the cold soba (dipped in a dark sauce), hot soba (served in soup with a chunk of fish), and a red-bean based jelly for dessert. Everything was fantastically delicious.

The next weekend not much happened. I had to work on that Sunday, though the one class I had scheduled got cancelled. No problem - got plenty of office time to catch up on planning and paperwork. As I was wrapping up for the day and about to go home, I heard a voice behind me: "Ready to go to Zama?" It turned out Rodney was on his way to visit his old buddy from high school and I was invited, so I spent the evening at his house drinking and playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Overall a pretty fun night. I relaxed the following day at an outdoor cafe on Enoshima island and read the book my parents had mailed me (A Memory of Light, for those who know).

I was invited to a hanami party (literally "flower-viewing party") on the first weekend in April in Yoyogi park in Tokyo. I met Cheryl there and we met up with a couple of teachers I met in training and their friends. The tradition in Japan is to find a park with a lot of cherry blossoms, lay out a picnic blanket, drink beer/wine, play games, shoot the bull, and look at the flowers. We did get a couple hours of viewing in, but unfortunately it was pretty cloudy and started thundering at about 2:00 (which was really unfortunate because that meant it rained on both of the prime cherry blossom viewing weekends). After packing up and pushing through the mass exit of the park we decided to go to Shinjuku, which was a couple stations away. There we ate okonomiyaki, chatted some more, and then went our separate ways.

Me and Cheryl at Yoyogi park

Some of the few remaining flowers at Yoyogi park

The following weekend I made the trip to Yamanashi to visit Cheryl, who was performing with her taiko group at a local peach blossom festival. This was technically my first festival, so I went crazy with the festival food, eating a package of yakisoba (fried noodles), an order of takoyaki (fried pancake balls with octopus inside), and okonomiyaki (fried cabbage and egg pancake with bacon and ginger). The performance was pretty cool to watch, and afterwards Cheryl had to attend an extra practice session, so I got to be a spectator there too. Back at her apartment, Cheryl and I made a pumpkin pie...Well, Cheryl made the pie and I did the dishes...that counts, right? Anyway, we can both now say that we baked a pumpkin pie using the oven setting on her microwave, which itself is a feat. We ate it while watching Despicable Me, which was the first time watching it for both of us. I do recommend it for those who haven't seen it. It's strange, but quite funny.

The taiko group performing

And one with a closer view of Cheryl

And one with the two of us

Another weekend in April, Cheryl's cousin and her business partner came to Japan and had an extra day to go sightseeing in Tokyo. So Cheryl and I met up with them in Shinjuku, grabbed a teriyaki burger from McDonalds, then headed over to the Ueno Zoo. The highlights of the zoo were the Giant Panda and being sure to visit every bird exhibit to poke fun at Cheryl's cousin's unfortunate fear of anything with a beak. All in all everyone had a good time. On the way out we stumbled upon a miniature festival so we walked through it, ate some fried food (among them fried chicken on a stick and rice balls wrapped in bacon).

That pretty much sums up the first weeks of spring. Look at the next post for Golden Week details!