Aomori Orientation: Day 2 - Chronicles of Okonomiyaki

We had no idea what to order! All okonomiyaki looks pretty much the same when it's cooked, so we couldn't just point at a picture and order. ^^;;

It was pretty embarrassing, actually, because I asked the waitress what one of the pictures was, and she said "okonomiyaki imagi" i.e. of okonomiyaki. But I didn't process "imagi" as "image" (darn katakana-ized English!) so I thought she was saying a type of okonomiyaki. So I was like, oh, okay, I'll order this. And the waitress was like, which one (in Japanese, of course)? ^^;;

So then I finally figured it out, and we managed to order. C got bacon and cheese, and I got plain old pork.

Then when the food came, we didn't know how the heck we were supposed to cook it! The waitress saw our confusion, though (well, she likely figured it out when we had such a hard time ordering!) and asked me (still in Japanese) if we knew how to cook okonomiyaki, and I admitted with some embarrassment that I didn't know how (shiranai). So she told us that someone would cook it for us! (Thank goodness!)

How to cook okonomiyaki:

1. Pour the oil (in the can on the grill) onto the grill and use a spatula to spread it evenly across the cooking surface.

2. Mix up everything in the bowl well. (This step may differ depending on what type of okonomiyaki place you're at. Some places/people layer their okonomiyaki: batter, toppings, batter, egg, etc.)

3. Pour the okonomiyaki batter onto the grill, making a nice, circular shape (like a pancake).












4. Let cook for 5-10 minutes before flipping. (This is the trickiest step, apparently, because a lot of people try to flip too early and it makes things messy. I don't know how to tell when you're supposed to flip it, but I've heard that when the top starts bubbling, it should be ready for flipping.)












5. Cook for 5-10 more minutes. Again, patience is important here to make sure that it's actually fully cooked. Once it's done, top with sauce, bonito flakes, seaweed flakes, and/or mayonnaise, to taste.












Step 6. Enjoy!!

Aomori Orientation: Day 2

Thursday morning a group of us got a little lost on our way back to the Board of Education Building, so we were a little late. (So much for my resolution to be on time for everything, after my Tokyo Orientation gaffe!) Then it was a loooong morning of information sessions. I was pretty sleepy for most of it, but K presented TESL (teaching English as a second language) tips, so I made an effort to stay alert through that.

During our lunch break, we tried MOS Burger, the domestic McDonald’s competitor. (MOS stands for Mountain, Ocean, Sky.) It was okay, but when I ordered, I didn’t realize that the sauce had a heck load of ONIONS! xP I don’t know if I’ll be eating a MOS (beef) burger again anytime soon. (A bit of a moot point, anyway, though, since there isn’t one in Towada.)

After lunch it was back for more info sessions, and finally we broke off for excursions. I was in K and R’s group, with AH, C and G. Some people needed to wait a bit to get their paperwork and documents ready for the multiple-entry visa, so we went back to the Auga for a little bit. When we came back to the hotel to pick up them (the people who were finishing off their applications), our keitei were waiting for us! Once everyone had their keitei documentation and Docomo freebies put away, we went off to visit a local shrine before going to get our multiple-entry visas.

The shrine was pretty nice. Plus it was cool that one of the monks actually explained to us about the rituals and the shrine (with some of the guys more fluent in Japanese translating).

Oh, and one funny story about our shrine visit was that AH accidentally dropped her hotel room key into the koi pond while she was trying to take pictures! One of the monks had to get a net and fish out!

The multiple-entry visa application process wasn’t as long or complicated as I thought it’d be, but there were still some interesting things. We had to go up to the fifth floor to pay our fees. Once we paid, they gave us stamps which we had to stick on our forms as proof that we’d paid. Then the room where they actually processed the applications, they would only accept five people in the room at a time—everyone else had to wait in the hall!

When that was all done, R and K took us to a foreign food store. I didn’t really feel a need/craving for anything from home, so I just used the opportunity to pick up some omiyage (souvenirs) for the office. Apparently it’s not necessary for a business trip, but I figured it was better to over-omiyage than to under-omiyage.

The guys, G and D, were planning on going to a beer garden, but C and I were kind of tired so we went off for okonomiyaki on our own.

It was good, but I forgot that in some places you’re supposed to make your own! Thankfully the waitress figured out pretty quickly that we were clueless foreigners, so she asked us if we knew how to cook it and offered to have someone cook it for us when I shamefacedly admitted that I didn’t know (shiranai).

On our way back to the hotel from the okonomiyaki place, we passed the weird snack bar lady and she asked us if we were going home, if we were still at the conference the next day, &etc.! I answered as best I could, and then we hurried away. =P

When we got back to the hotel, G, D and TI (a Taiwanese girl from New Zealand) were just hanging out in the hotel lobby, so C and I decided to join them. There were other people hanging around waiting to go to karaoke, and some of them decided to come with us. When we got to the place, though, we saw that it closed at 9pm! We weren’t 100% sure if we were reading the sign correctly though—I mean, why would a beer garden close so early?—so we went up to check it out. They were just cleaning and closing up as we got there. Some middle-aged/elderly Japanese ladies came up right after us, and we held the elevator doors for them to come down with us, but they didn’t want to get in the elevator with us scary foreigners. =P

Since the beer garden was a bust, we decided to go back to Pago Pago. On the way, we met some more JETs going back to the hotel to meet for karaoke, and once again picked up some of them. It was quite a sizeable group that came into Pago Pago, and it was a small bar, so we nearly filled the place!

Once again the guys had beers, and C had Guinness. G ordered me a lemon sour, which tasted fine, but I drank WAY too fast. Usually I take a long time sipping beer, and have a lot of water in between sips. I still drank a lot of water, but I drank the lemon sour a lot faster than I should have, because I couldn’t taste the alcohol. I was okay for most of the time, but after a time, I started feeling it, especially when G, TI and D all started smoking. C was great and noticed that I wasn’t feeling well, and offered to go back with me. I stood up to pay, and all of a sudden, it hit me.

Luckily the bathroom was empty at the time. I ran in, headed straight to the toilet and threw up. It was pretty gross. Thank goodness I had gum in my bag!

I felt a lot better after that, but it was still good to leave and get some fresh air.

On the walk back, we stopped by a konbini (convenience store) so C could go to the washroom. G bought another beer (this after 4 beers at the bar, plus a tequila shot), and I bought a kiwi-flavoured Kit Kat. (I ate it the next day, and it was really tasty!)

Further along on our walk, we saw a bunch of people breakdancing on the sidewalk. It was pretty cool, so we stood around and watched for a bit.

Then it was back to the hotel for a good sleep!

Aomori Orientation: Day 1

Wednesday I walked to the train station to catch the bus to Aomori. All of us Towada and Shichinohe newbies were on the bus together, which was nice. We were early, so after checking our bags at the hotel, we went across the street to wander around Auga, a big department store. Once we’d gone through all the floors, we went into a café on the ground floor for coffee. No one really spoke/read Japanese except for me, so I ended up reading the katakana menu for everyone and talking with the waitress. I wasn’t using very good Japanese, but she understood, so it was all good.

The first thing we did for orientation was we lined up in alphabetical city order, by type of position: CIR, municipal ALT (elementary and junior high school), prefectural ALT (senior high school). Then we walked into this big ballroom (still in order) and they introduced everyone by name; we had to step forward and give a little wave when our names were called. Then there were a bunch of speeches, and finally free lunch! There was a lot of yummy food, but the cold apple soup definitely had the best presentation!

Then they walked us to the Board of Education building where all of orientation sessions would take place. We had some introductory sessions, and then it was back to the hotel to check in and look at cellphones! There representatives from Docomo set up in the hotel lobby to help us get our cellphones! Even though we couldn’t do it in Towada, we were able to get our cellphones with just our passports and alien registration card receipts in Aomori City. I got a Motorola—though it wasn’t the nicest phone, and it wasn’t a free phone—because functionality was my primary focus. My phone was the only one that had an English/Japanese dictionary, and 3M and GSM (so I can pretty much take it anywhere in the world!).

After that, C’s friend JA met up with a small group of us—C, G and TR—and took us to an Indian restaurant called Ahkbar’s. It was really good!! And the serving sizes were pretty big.

Even though the guys drank seven beers between them at dinner, we still ended up going out for drinks after (sans JA, as she was still a bit sick, and she had work the next day). We wandered into a random snack bar at first, and the lady who owned it was a little…odd.

I didn’t understand everything she said, but G (who’d studied in Tokyo for a year) translated a lot for us later. Basically the lady had traveled a lot—through Europe, the Caribbean, etc. She’d been to Paris FOUR times and said she really liked it, but she also said she didn’t eat/like anything other than Japanese food! Then she kept going on about different countries and why they were bad. For example, she said that Russian people are very beautiful when they’re young, but once they hit their thirties, they all get fat! She also asked G why Americans are all fat—was it because they ate a lot of meat? But as prejudiced/xenophobic as she seemed to be, she didn’t seem to have any issues talking with G (a white guy). Then too, at one point she commented that “foreign girls are all so pretty” but when G replied that many Japanese girls were pretty too, she was like “no, they’re not.”

Basically the woman was a bundle of contradictions. And when we wanted to pay the bill, at first she said it was 1500 yen (~$15) per person!! All we’d had was a couple of beers (one each for the girls, two each for the guys) and some snacks (like mini-pepperoni sticks). Apparently we weren’t just paying for the food, but for the conversation and atmosphere! Thankfully G talked her down to 1000 yen for each of the guys, and 500 yen for each of the girls.

We kept on walking, and after checking a couple of places, ended up at a “Western style” bar (i.e. NOT an izakaya) called Pago Pago. The music and atmosphere in the place were pretty good, and we stayed there for quite a bit. I was talked into another beer (of which I drank a third or less), C had a couple of Guinness’ and the guys had another 3-4 beers each. When we got our bills, we found out that there was a 500 yen table charge (per person). It wasn’t a lot, but if we were going to keep bar-hopping (as G wanted) it was going to be really expensive!

So C and I made G ask at the rest of the places we checked out whether there was a table charge. We asked at 3-4 places before we finally decided to go to karaoke. Everyone had more beers, except me. G ordered me a lemon sour—which actually didn’t really taste like alcohol to me, which is rare—but I only took a couple of sips. The place we went to looked nice on the outside, but it was a hassle. G had to sign up for a membership card (otherwise it would’ve been more expensive) and half of the songs in the song catalogue weren’t available when we tried to choose them! Plus we were upstairs and the air conditioning wasn’t working very well (that, or we just didn’t know that we could adjust the temperature settings).

After that, it was back to the hotel. I managed to find a weak wireless signal, so C came to my room to use the internet. When she left, we saw TR passed out in front of my door! I’d told him that I got a signal on my floor, so apparently he’d been wandering the halls trying to pick up a signal and coincidentally ended up passing out in front of my room. @_@

That night, I jacked up the AC way up and had the temperature set to something like 18 degrees! It had been so long since I’d slept with AC, I guess I went a little nuts.

Towada Hanabi (Fireworks) Festival

Tuesday I packed for the Aomori (prefectural) Conference from Wednesday to Friday. I also finally made my way to the JTB travel to book my flight (to Toronto) for October. The travel agent was super nice. I felt a little bad because my schedule wasn’t really flexible and I asked her to go through a lot of different options, but finally we ended up getting me a flight on Air Canada leaving Japan and arriving in Canada on Thursday night, and leaving Canada on Sunday morning and returning to Japan Monday in the afternoon. I had to pay a little extra to guarantee my seat, but it still ended up being just a little over 100,000 yen (~$1000), which was a lot cheaper than I was expecting, especially for Air Canada. Plus the return flight is direct, which is really convenient!

Then, early in the evening (around 6pm?) I finally mustered up the courage to go around and to meet my neighbours. I introduced myself, explained I was a new ALT from Canada, and gave out omiyage (souvenirs from Canada). Everyone was very nice, although I didn’t really understand much of what they were saying because I got so flustered by the fact that I was talking alone with them that I couldn’t really process much. One of the neighbours spoke a little English, and she mentioned that she has two children in school. She also said something about how she was a little surprised because my face was Asian, so she didn’t realize I was a new ALT.

Oh, and a funny thing was that everyone asked me if there had been a change in ALT’s. I guess my predecessor didn’t tell any of the neighbours that she was leaving. *shrug*

After that, I went to see the fireworks in the park near City Hall with R, K, J, and AH. They started pretty early—before we even left—so we were worried they would end before we got there, but they actually lasted for about an hour and fifteen minutes!

We wandered around the park for a while, looking at the various food stands that had been set up. Seeing many of the guys and girls in yukata made me wish I had one too! I think that’s a real Japanese experience: going to a summer festival in a yukata and geta! Oh well, hopefully I’ll be able to get one soon. (Maybe they’ll even be on sale, since summer is almost over!)

I also bought my long desired takoyaki, but I forgot to take a picture of it because I had to grab it and go! AB and RB (his wife) were waiting for us at AH's house to take us to RB’s brother’s farm. There we met a huge group of RB’s family, and ate various grilled meats—scallop, chicken, etc.

They offered us lots of alcohol too, but I abstained.