Nikko

Brad and I took a break from the heat in Saitama and headed up to Nikko to visit some World Heritage sites last week. We stayed at a traditional Japanese ryokan, which is similar to a bed and breakfast, and included a natural hot spring pool that is situated on the ryokan grounds.

We stayed on the 4th floor and had an amazing view of the river going past our building.

View from our balcony. The first night we stayed here there was a huge thunderstorm, so we just turned out all the lights and got to see some pretty cool lightning displays.

I'm not sure what the clicking noise is, but there are some cool lightning strikes in here. 

Brad on the bridge near our hotel.

On the bridge looking up the river. Our hotel is on the right, and you can see there's a little waterfall on the lower left. 

This is me in front of a 5 storied pagoda that houses the Five Wisdom Buddha. It was originally built in 1650 but was destroyed in a fire. This one was built in 1815. 

Ever heard of the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys? Well, this is where they come from. This is a wooden carving that's about 2x4 feet--smaller than I was expecting! The carving was apart of a few other monkey carvings that depict the typical life span of a monkey from birth to death. 

This is part of a building that is included in the revolving library building. It was built in 1618! We couldn't go inside this building.

Again, this is apart of the revolving library. 

This is the Yomeimon or Sunset gate because there are over 400 carving on it and people never get tired of looking at it. It was one of my favorites to see.

The entrance to one of the shrines. 

This is a bridge that only the emperor of Japan was allowed to cross. Now you can pay $5 to experience what he did, or you can just enjoy the scenery and take a picture with it. (And it is beautiful scenery!)

Anyway, Brad and I had so much fun! We have tons more pictures on Picasa, so take a look!

Want to See More Pictures?

I have finally put all of our pictures onto Picasa so everyone can see pictures from our trips, not just facebook users. If you would like to see them, click here. It took me forever to upload them, and right now I can't muster up the courage to write captions for a lot of them, so PLEASE comment on them if you have any questions or want to know more about them etc. and I will get back to you.

We just got back from a quick trip to Nikko a couple days ago. All of the pictures are on Picasa, but I will do an update on the blog telling you about our trip tomorrow.

Enjoy! And again, I love to hear from people!

Friendship Day

Yesterday we went to the Friendship Festival that Yokota Air Force Base puts on every year near Haijima (where Chris used to live). This is the one weekend out of the entire year that they open up the base to the public. I guess last year over 100,000 people visited over the weekend and by seeing the amount of people there yesterday, I wouldn't doubt it. 

We needed our passports to get on to the base, but Japanese people didn't need to have them. The soldiers were very friendly, but at the same time, I can't imagine the nightmare of coordinating safety for the event, they are still very much on guard during the entire thing!

I think the festival is a great way to foster community relations though. They had both American food and Japanese food, did plane demonstrations, Japanese citizens and soldiers were taking pictures together (and some were asking for soldier autographs lol), there were strong man exercises, attack dog exercises, and fireworks. It was really funny seeing some of the people try American food/drinks for the first time. Brad and I were waiting in line for some food and a couple in front of us were debating on whether or not Gatorade was a sports drink or juice. (By the way, anything that is not coffee, tea, or water is considered juice here and while many people enjoy "juice" it is still considered for children.)

We got to see some cool airplanes, eat some American food, and basically just walk around one area of the base. And I got to have my first Diet Pepsi in over 6 months!! (They only have Coke Zero and Pepsi Nex here.)

Inside one of the buildings. They had different bands playing underneath the flags on a stage.

This was funny. Notice the picture on the right: Star Trek anyone?

Even the cheerleaders on the base came out to do a performance. From what we understood, they don't have a football team, but only compete in 2 competitions along with other bases during the year. 

We got to see some helicopters and a couple of planes take off. Unfortunately I think we missed the flying acrobatics and parachuting. :(

Not the best picture...but still nice! It was so hot out--we definitely got a little sunburned!

People loved seeing the American fire truck. Japanese fire trucks are about half the size of American ones. 

A refueling plane!

Unauthorized entry is punishable by Japanese art. (?)

F-22

I think this is an F-16

And they had some of the Japanese Defense Force airplanes on display too.

After taking a quick recharge nap on the runway...

...it was time to break out the"standard issue", won from a claw game bag, cooler/speaker system to rock out to on the runway.

And then the sun went down. FYI if you ask any Japanese person what color the sun is, they say red. 

Aren't cultural differences interesting?

When we were walking out we got to see an attack dog demonstration. Very cool!

I took a lot more pictures (as I do with almost everything). I'm working on getting all of our pictures (and maybe videos, too) onto Picassa so that you can see all the pictures from our adventures. Hope you're enjoying life as much as we are! 

English Board: I need your help!

Brad and I are both in charge of putting together English bulletin boards for our students roughly every month-2 months. I have a little board that's about 3x4 feet. For the 1st couple of months I did a board that showed different areas of Colorado and had a little Colorado word search worksheet for the students to fill out if they wanted to for a sticker from me. (I have a sticker sheet that I use to help motivate them to raise their hand in class, talk to me outside of class etc.)

For June and July I put together a board for the World Cup. 

Sorry it's so small! It's the best picture I have at the moment. I have the flags of all the countries that were in the tournament around the outside, a schedule on the lower left, a picture of the Japanese team, a map showing where all the countries are that were participating, a short English blurb on the World Cup and a handout. 

And since we've been out of school for a month, I need some ideas on what to put up in September. I was thinking about doing something about the similarities and differences of English vs. Japanese schools. For example: Japanese schools start in April and end in March and have a 1 month break in August (with lots of homework). American schools start in August and end in May with no homework over summer vacation. Japanese public schools have uniforms and most students have school lunch, which takes place in the classroom. American schools have varied school lunch/paper sack lunch that takes place in the cafeteria etc. BUT I'm having trouble figuring out how to do this with little to no English (English levels are still pretty low at my school).

Does anybody have any ideas or websites that they know of to come up with a board using little to no English and with a fun game/worksheet to include with it? Any ideas are welcome! If you want you can email me at bwkgand@gmail.com

Thank you!

Japanese BBQ

Chris finished his contract at the private teaching school he was at in Akishima in June, but he still keeps in contact and gets to be apart of activities with the great group of students he used to teach. We have previously gotten to know a lot of his previous students from our skiing trip to Niigata in February, and also the Hanami (Cherry Blossom) party in April. This time, Yuta planned a BBQ and camping trip and invited us along.

We made some hamburgers to show what American's have at BBQs, while they cooked thin strips of marinated pork on the grill, Japanese style. Yummy!

Manning the grill

There were fishermen to one side of us...

...and a bunch of people on the other side of us.

Everybody at the BBQ. The best part about it was that everyone was a different age, and spoke different levels of English but everyone had fun! (The 2 other foreigners are the current teachers at Chris' old school.)

After that we headed to the cabin that Yuta reserved for the night. We ate some more, drank some more, played cards and Jenga until way too late!

Yuta's nickname is now Mr. Jenga because he has self proclaimed master Jenga skills. :) He tried to mess Brad up in this video. lol


Yui is 6 years old. Chris taught both her and her mom for over a year. They are playing a popular drumming game at arcades here in Japan on Yuta's ipad.


Yuta bought a really cool/powerful laser when he was in China a couple months ago. As you can see, it was fun to play with... It even had a screen on it that made it look like fireflies were in the trees.


Yuta took over the camera and filmed a little bit...

The next day we headed to a fun place that is similar to Fun Plex in Colorado. It had a bunch of claw games and pachinko places as well as curling, billiards, tennis, bowling, roller skating etc. It was such a fun weekend!

Claw games!

Mt. Takao and Kamakura Beach

This past week was so much fun! I had my GRE test on the 10th and got that out of the way. (whew!) And now on to enjoying the rest of our summer vacation!

We went hiking with Chris up Mt. Takao. It was such a relief to get out of the grey and excruciatingly hot Tokyo area and enjoy the green and somewhat cooler Mt. Takao. However, I forgot my camera for the hike so I still need to get the pictures from Chris.

Japanese folklore includes the mythical tengu. According to wikipedia, tengu started as disruptive demons and softened into protective, if still dangerous spirits of the mountains and forests. The hike contains many different pictures and sculptures of tengu that we got to see along the way.

Tengu all have long noses.

We stopped at a Buddhist temple and got to see a service complete with monks, drums, incense, and blessings. It was a very cool experience! They don't let you take pictures though... But you can always come to visit and see it!

Next we headed to the top of the mountain where there was a breathtaking view of Tokyo. Mt. Takao is less than an hour from Tokyo, so it's a nice place for many people to head to if they need a quick get away.

As we were heading down the mountain we saw a group of foreigners, heading up the mountain. All of a sudden Chris asked if they were the band Elliot Minor, and they were! Chris went to their concert earlier in the week and we just happened to run into them on the mountain. They were very nice, and even though Brad and I haven't really listened to them, it was still a fun experience. 

Mt. Takao also has a trolley that takes visitors halfway up the mountain. At the top of the trolley is an all you can eat buffet complete with all you can drink beer and shochu. Yummy! So of course we ate here before heading down the mountain in the trolley and calling it a day.

Brad at the buffet

It was so fun to go out and do something a little more active than just walking up and down concrete streets. I can't wait to do more hiking in Nikko in a week! (I will add more pictures of the hiking trip when I get them. Stay tuned!)

A couple days later we headed to the beach in Kamakura. Japan is not known for their pretty beaches, but it was still fun! And I couldn't live here for a year and say that I had never been to the ocean either!

It was crowded but at least we were able to enjoy the beach! The forecast said that we had a chance of getting hit by the typhoon that flooded parts of Korea last week. I'm glad it missed us!

Samba Festival

Our little city had another festival on August 7th. This one wasn't quite as big as the previous one, but it was still fun! We got to watch some dancing, Japanese and Brazilian style!

There is bamboo with pieces of paper tied to them that are hanging over the street. It is called tanabata and is celebrated around this time of year. The pieces of paper are peoples wishes or prayers.