Obon in Misawa

Monday (we were given the day off to get our households in order) T-sensei picked AH and I up to go with her family to “celebrate” obon. Basically obon is a time when families go to pay respects to their ancestors; during this time, families clean the tombstones, leave offerings, and pray at temples. T-sensei and her husband were great about explaining the various rituals, and they even asked us to participate by placing some incense on the tomb marker.

(One thing that I didn't think about until much later, though, is whether or not I should have participated in the ceremony. I mean, I viewed it as a cultural/respect thing, but there was a Buddhist priest performing rites, and it is a Buddhist holiday/"celebration". Should I have tactfully declined to participate? I don't know, and I suspect that this will be a recurring problem/issue for me: the tension between being open to different cultures/beliefs and being true to my Christian beliefs.)

After that, we went for dinner at T-sensei’s house. Her mother had made most of the food, and there was a TON of it. Her husband was really excited to have AH there, since she was able to try out all his different beers—and of course that meant he was able to drink as well! We also met T-sensei’s two teenage (high school aged) sons. They were quite shy—probably because we’re girls—but they seemed like nice guys.

Homecooking

Sunday was a grocery shopping and cleaning day. It was also the first day I cooked “real” meals. They weren’t all that impressive, but they were edible and healthy! For lunch, I fried up some eggplant and grilled some salmon in the fish grill. Unfortunately I overcooked the salmon because I had no idea what I was doing! Dinner was pretty similar: fried eggplant and octopus (undercooked, I think—it was still pretty chewy), plus a fried egg.

Photos: Two separate, but remarkably similar meals.

Food & Fun

It was really hot on Saturday—so hot I couldn’t stand staying in the house all day. So I went to AH’s house. Luckily she was home (I’d tried calling, but the phone just kept ringing) since I was dying from the heat even on that short 20min walk, and it would’ve been a pain to just turn around and go home if she was away!

So yeah, we sat around in her house for quite a while—it was in the shade and she had screen doors (I didn’t find mine until afterwards) so there was a nice breeze blowing through the house. We called K and made arrangements to meet up with her, R, CH and J for karaoke, and then went to a nearby French bakery.

Man, that place was awesome! They had so many yummy looking things, it was hard to choose! (Thank goodness *I* don’t live near it, or I would probably go there all the time and to heck with my budget and my resolution to “get fit/healthy”.) In the end, though, I went for the Tanuki cupcake because it looked more chocolate-y than the Doraemon one. =P The store even gave us mini ice-packs to keep our treats cool as we walked back to AH’s place!

When everyone else came to meet us for karaoke, we actually ended up going back to the bakery because we told them how cool it was and they all wanted to try. Then we walked down to Karaoke Festa (near my house). We sang for about three hours—we actually did Bohemian Rhapsody!—and then headed to Skylark (a chain restaurant) for a late dinner/snack. I had pasta with some sort of meat and a lightly poached egg, plus green tea and vanilla ice cream for dessert!

Karaoke photos:

Shichinohe JETs

AH and I took the bus to the office on Friday. (T-sensei had showed us the stop in front of the City Hall on Thursday). M-san, one of our office ladies, met us on the bus, so we didn’t have to worry about what to do or where to get off. The bus system is actually pretty interesting. When you get on, you take a ticket from a dispenser at the front and it will have a number on it. At the front of the bus, there is a number board that lists all the numbers and shows the updated fares as it goes along its route. For example, our stop was #3, so when we reached the office, it said 490 under number 3, meaning that was how many yen we had to pay. If we had gotten on one stop earlier, though, we would have had to pay 510 yen.

When we got in, T-sensei said we could leave around lunch time to go back to the City Hall to pick up money for our “business trip” to Aomori City (for our prefectural orientation). We would also have Monday and Tuesday off to get things in our homes organized! She also offered to pick us up on Monday and to take us to experience obon (paying respects to ancestors) with her family. Then she had to go for a seminar, so AH and I were left just kind of kicking around the office.

After eating our bentos for lunch (a bento box is available for order each day for 400 yen), we headed back to City Hall. Thankfully the lady who had helped us with our alien registration cards was expecting us, so getting our travel expense money was quite simple.

I took a leisurely walk home, taking pictures of the Kanchogai-Dori (Horse Street) and a bit of the shrine in front of my house before my batteries died. Then I just hung around the house, randomly organized things and/or just lounging around.

City Hall (Shiyakushou) pictures:

Pictures of Kanchogai Dori:

For dinner I was planning on just making onigiri or something simple, and had the rice all made when the doorbell rang. There on my doorstep were a bunch of JETs from Shichinohe—K and R, CH, CD, and T—plus my fellow Towada newbies.

They gave me all their contacts and information about upcoming JET events, and invited me out for dinner and possibly other fun things to follow. I felt kind of gross (after hanging around in the sticky humidity of the house, with just one fan to keep me cool) but after checking to make sure my rice cooker was turned off, off I went with them!

We went to Tijuana Pizza where I had a tasty pork and (Aomori!) apple pizza and enjoyed some good conversations about anime, life in Japan &etc. Then we went to a Lawson’s to buy ice cream and to decide where we would go next.

 

After loitering quite a while in the parking lot of the Lawson’s, they decided to go bowling. Since I wasn’t wearing any socks (and I don’t even like bowling when I’m in Mississauga) I opted to go home early with CD and CH.

Oh, and R and K were super nice and offered to take us (AH and I) shopping at the Aeon Supercentre if we still needed to buy things.

Back at home, I made my first onigiri! ^_^