A haircut of destiny/chemical burns

As previously written in this blog, I had my hair cut at Vessel (where I was once before with a great haircut but a sort of tragic ending). This time I opted for a straight perm [by which I mean I was peer pressured into doing it by two Asians]. It ended up being a 3 hour long process. First my hair was washed. Next, smelly chemicals were applied bit by bit until my hair was covered in ‘beauty toxins’. Afterwards, another wash. After the second wash, my hair was painstakingly blown dry and ironed straight and shiny. This in itself took an hour! After my hair looked fabulous, they smothered it with chemicals again. Of course this was followed with a third wash, a second blow drying, and VOILA – straight perm achieved! I am pleased with the result so far. I find it’s hard to mess up my hair at this point. We’ll see how it keeps up as the summer months roll along.

I had also spent most of the day hanging out with Yumi and her high school buddy Helen (a Canadian-Korean 16 year old who was hysterical). Helen was telling us all about the trouble she’d get into by hanging out with BOYS at the ARCADE after SCHOOL! Japanese schools are so damned strict, I had no idea!!! I didn’t know you could get in trouble for hanging out with the opposite sex outside of school grounds and outside of school times! “Babel” has led me astray.

Gaijin muck around, plant rice

I joined Leigh, Ray, Steve, Claire, Ruth and Masami Yoshida for some good old fashioned rice planting this weekend. The steps are simple: roll up pants, put on a ridiculous hat, take off your shoes, stand knee deep in mud/creatures and shove some rice plants in the ground. Masami had already planted about 99% of the rice with a tractor or machine of some sort and the group of us were just filling in the holes that the machine had missed. There isn’t much more to tell, but it was one of those experiences where you stop mid-way between your task to think, “Wow I’m planting rice in Japan – it doesn’t get any zanier than that does it?” I would also stop every few minutes to think about how many tadpoles, swimming centipedes, snails and general creepy crawlies [including spiders that walk on water] were flitting around my ankles. I didn’t like it when I had those thoughts, but they were frequent. The guys got REALLY into it (along with Leigh… and even Claire for that matter!) I, on the other hand, was more of a well-wisher and enjoyed the experience without ever wanting to do it again. We finished off the evening with a feast at the Yoshidas, and I quickly fell into a food coma.
The next morning I met Yuuki and we went to the Sakura Park in Honjo/Tsutsukawa for the sports challenge day. It wasn’t anything spectacular, just a bunch of kids playing baseball (Honjo won because the teams tied so they janken’d for it!), PTA games, and eventually a long walk around the Tsutsukawa area. I think it was about 8km, they said. Yuuki and I put on our number jerseys and set out with the entirety of Honjo Elementary school girls on our walking adventure! It was very very very hot. I blew through two bottles of water within the hour and a half we were outside. We also saw a million rice patties, old houses, birds, bugs, and even a snake in the grass! Eek! Afterwards Yuuki and I went to eat FAMOUS SOBA at the Urashima Shrine Park in Honjo across from my house. Good eatin’. We then were too lazy to do anything else the whole day and went home to nap for all eternity.

Rachel is prodded in the eye for medical purposes.

My sister had left the country, which consequently left me with about 60,000 yen to my name and 3 weeks until pay day. I decided to ignore my lack of funds and take a trip down to Fukuchiyama with Yumi with the sole purpose of finding me new glasses.

The optometrist in Japan was not unlike the ones I’ve been to in the States. There’s a waiting room, a receptionist, and lots of weird eyeball attachments within the office itself. The differences however were also quite numerous. The first being that Yumi and I waited to be seen for almost two hours. During this time we had to watch a British war movie set in Africa from the 1970’s. Roger Moore was in it! The receptionist had lost the paper I had filled out about my medical history etc. When we re-wrote the information, she promptly placed my form in the back of the queue. I believe that’s why we waited two hours. I wasn’t terribly pleased with how that went, but as Japan brings out the timid, non-complainer in me, I contently sat and waited for my (UNFAIR) turn.

I had my eyesight measured! They use C’s instead of E’s… I wonder how much of a difference it made! They discovered that I was as blind as I had previously mentioned, and started measuring my eyes for contact lenses. This somehow involved me being prodded in the eye with a queue tip and then immediately having my eyes rinsed in a glorified bedpan! I wasn’t used to that sort of thing, so it caught me off guard otherwise I may have instinctually fought it. Anyway, I had lenses fitted on me (contact and regular) and then set off to the glasses shop next door to pick out new frames.

It was a bit emotional having to say goodbye to my old glasses frames… I think I had had them on the bridge of my nose since I was 18 or 19 years old. However, I picked out ones that essentially looked the same (to this day nobody has noticed them). So, in all it was a happy ending!

I should also note that Yumi and I went to eat ramen, and that it was tasty!

Laura visits Nippon 2K8

ロロ・日本

My sister came to Japan! I feel like it was the highlight of my entire time here so far. My sister and I as many of you know are very close... we may even be BFF. So, having her here made for an AWESOME two weeks and two days in Japan.

On Laura's first full day in Japan, she came to Ine Elementary School. She did a small self introduction at the beginning of the classes and answered some questions (they weren't very many). Other than that, she watched the kids play games indoors and out and we all had lunch together with the first and second graders! I think she had a good time -- and it was definitely more fun for me having another person in on the jokes I feel surround me 99% of the time.




We went around Ine and Honjo as per usual, hitting up the regular joints: Urashima Shrine and the udon restaurant, Ikari Farm, the Wind Turbines between Ine and Yasaka, and the boat houses. Naturally, I took Laura out to Amanohashidate as well so she could look through her legs and see something resembling an upside-down island. Or a dragon. You decide!









On our first weekend, we hung around the Tango Peninsula, which included getting lunch, playing video games, and sleeping in. However, on Sunday we braved a badly planned trek to Tottori. 10 hours of transit time, 35 minutes on the dunes. We are so HARD CORE EXTREEEEME. Here are proof pictures. That day finished off with a very late dinner at Tenten in Mineyama. Poor us. We also hit up Sora, an ice cream farm with baby cows and pretty flowers on the premises! Ice cream makes hard core treks more hard core, after all.

Laura -- after about 10 hours on trains and in the car -- ready for action!

I also took Laura to Tokyo! This was equally exciting for me because I'd never ventured out much when I first arrived in Japan last July... I was too jet lagged! So we stayed near Ueno Park and got to the zoo, the aquarium (near Disneyland -- Laura wouldn't let me go), and we hopped around to Harajuku for a bit of shopping. Tokyo is too big... and because of it I felt like there were too many places to go but not enough reasons to go to any of them! Still, the hotel was fun and we had some fast internet, which is always a vacation for me!

Rachel is a bear.

A seal at the Ueno Zoo!
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Laura finds someone to love.

Laura gearing up for Harajuku. And a boss good time.

We crashed at Megan's for the night after getting back from Tokyo. We also hit up Osaka for a few hours to grab some Okonomiyake!

Some Osaka for some Cabbage Pancakey goodness

I have the laziest ferret in the universe.

The next day we headed to Nara: home of the sacred deer and the BIG BUDDHA. Also, Laura informed me, the biggest wooden structure in the world. Take THAT, Trojan Horse! The deer were cute -- even though it was raining for most of the day. The Big Buddha was awesome and I picked up some chocolate mochi for my co-workers/self on the way back!

Laura and Big Buddha make friends

At last -- one with nature! Laura's lifetime goal of being Pocahontas is realised!

We came home to Honjo for only two days before heading off to Kyoto. The first day we sort of walked around aimlessly because most of the attractions/sight seeing areas were closed by the time we got done with Amanohashidate and drove into the city. We saw the pet store though, and hung out with Amy, Ian, Megan and Greg at some random izakaya near Nijo. Why did we do this? Because it was LAURA'S 20TH BIRTHDAY! WOAH! We had a good time.

Amanohashidate -- now the OTHER side!

Laura rings in her 20th year of life by drinking ALL the beer.

Birthday onigiri was in order!

The next day we went WEST to Hiroshima. Here we saw the very heavy yet educational museum of Hiroshima. The Peace Park was really beautiful and rather upbeat; the Children's Memorial definitely being my favourite. We also got HOUNDED by elementary schoolers. It seems like all of Honshu was on a field trip to Hiroshima because we got interviewed/acosted by about 7 different groups! We got asked our names and home countries and afterward we had to sign their school books and take pictures with them. Fantastic!!! It really lightened the mood of the day, which was nice because we were only there for a few hours and all of them were hot and humid.

We finished up the vacation by playing wii and watching cartoons in the hotel with Megan after a dinner of Indian food and parfait (too much parfait). We also did some pretty excellent purikura which I may or may not bother to put up in the future. Oh yeah, we also saw Ginkakuji (the silver pavillion), the Philosopher's Walk, Nijo Castle, the Imperial Gardens and all the cool spots in the city.

I like a parfait!

Man. Dropping Laura off this morning was really sad because I'll miss her, but ... we did a LOT. It's hard to feel bad about a vacation when it was productive and awesome simultaneously. Still, I feel rather lonely being back in the house by myself. What can ya do.