How to silence a bar in Kitakami: Request funk music.

Matthew and I went out with some friends on Saturday night, and wrapped up our evening at a teeny-tiny bar downtown. It was a divey place known for its huge collection of vinyl, which the bartender was spinning throughout the night. The patrons at the bar seemed to be regulars: they were chatting with the bartender and singing along to Japanese traditional and pop music and American country, classic rock, and pop. The Doobie Brothers even warranted some bar piano.

The bartender ("Nice hige.") offered us the chance to make a request. Sadly, he had no Cutting Crew in his inventory ― 60s and 70s were better decades to choose from. He could, however, fulfill a request for the Commodores (but no "Brick House"?!), and fulfill it he did.

And . . . the bar went silent. Bar patrons looked at each other in befuddlement. We could hear the bartender explaining who was playing, to continued silence. He changed the disc after the song was over, and soon the bar was once again singing along . . . to Hall & Oates.

*sigh* I wonder what would have happened if I'd requested Prince.

I'm in the market for a winter coat. I didn't bring the one I used in Washington because a) it was a mid-calf length wool coat, which would have been too heavy and bulky to pack or ship; and b) it was from about forty pounds ago. So now I'm faced with the short versus long coat conundrum. Long would definitely keep more of me warm during the cold, cold Tohoku winter, but short has significant advantages for the bike traveler.

There is an art to dressing for bike travel. We only have to ride short distances, so it's not worth wearing casual clothes for the trip, then changing into our suits at work. It's suits all the way. So his cuffs don't get caught in the chain, Matthew tucks his pant legs into his socks. I don't wear socks that permit tuckage, so I fold and roll my cuffs up, 1980s pegged acid-wash jeans style. Unfortunately, most of my suits have wide legs, so the tight cuffing makes them balloon out, resulting in a girl on a mountain bike in three-inch heels and MC Hammer pants. Practical, yes. Likely to make People's Best Dressed issue, no.

Which brings us to coats. If you're wearing a long coat, you must carefully gather as much of the back part as you can and stuff it between your butt and the seat, lest it get caught in the tire and either send you flying or get destroyed. It's preferable to do this before you start riding somewhere so that your coattail-stuffing doesn't cause a near collision with a woman carrying a twelve-pack of toilet paper. (Hey, I said we were learning things the hard way.) A short coat, of course, requires none of this folderol and is thus more convenient and practical. You just have to not mind having cold legs. And wind rushing under your coat, making the rest of you cold too.

Decisions, decisions.

Autumn is in full swing here in Kitakami. Windy days, turning leaves, and frigid nights are now routine. For now, we're using our normal covers and sleeping in long underwear, but it won't be long until we have to add the heavier cover futon and switch out the fan for the portable heaters (yikes!). Thankfully, we had a cold and clear evening for otsukimi.

Traditionally celebrated by Japanese communities, otsukimi is the viewing of the first full moon in autumn. Instead of a man, Japanese see a rabbit pounding mochi (a smooth paste made of glutinous rice) in the patterns on the surface of the moon. People mark otsukimi by putting out treats made of mochi or rice flour, like dango, or autumn fruits and vegetables. I'm not aware that there was a sanctioned event in Kitakami, but we made a little celebration of it here at home by eating some usagi manjuu (bunny cakes filled with anko (adzuki bean paste)) and tsuki mochi (mochi filled with anko and made yellow, like the moon).



I only realized after purchase that I bought the bad-luck four pack of treats. Four is an inauspicious number in Japan; it's like thirteen to superstitious Americans. Oh, well. They tasted good.

Confidential to Dunky Chuck: Happy Birthday!

After many months, it was brought to our attention that our blog looked like crap on Internet Explorer. I think it's fixed now.

In general, we want and expect things to look right on every browser — so if you see something that looks wrong, please tell us!

Wherever you go in Japan, it seems you are never far from a Shinto shrine. They are everywhere, tucked between houses in residential areas, on a hillside in the country, or in a narrow space between hotels in the heart of Tokyo. Every day on my way to work, I pass this medium-sized one with well-kept grounds. It's on a strip of land about twenty feet wide, between a parking lot on the left and a house on the right.

Autumn is coming to Kitakami. I know this because the Daily Yamazaki has been touting "Autumn's Good Flavor Fair."



I couldn't tell you what the DY is contributing in terms of good flavor because the odor drove me out before I had a chance to fully contemplate the offerings. It smelled like the Wheaton Dunkin' Donuts at 3:30 in the morning on a Saturday — phoo!

Autumn does seem to be prime cooking season in Japan. Kaki (persimmons) will be ripe for picking soon, mushrooms and chestnuts are peaking, and rice harvest is just around the corner. Plus, chill nights and cool mornings invite steaming bowls of rice and udon. Last week, I made my first autumn dish: miso-simmered mackerel alongside some genmai (brown rice) bought from Matthew's rice-farmer student. He and his wife had also given us some kind of a chili relish to go on the rice that tastes like nothing we've ever had before, but is totally addictive. It has that certain je ne sais Nihon that many foods here do — some essentially Japanese flavor that is rarely, if ever, found abroad.

As they say, if your only tool is a chainsaw hammer, every problem starts to look like a summer camp nail.



We decided to splurge and get some ingredients to make burritos ($9 for a pack of tortillas and a can of beans?!), but forgot that we didn't have a can opener. For the record, the hammer didn't work. Faced with the choice between burritos without beans and going out into the rain to get a can opener ― well, it wasn't much of a choice, really. I got wet, and we had beans.

Japanese is a hard language to learn, between the three writing systems used simultaneously and the fact that kanji can have multiple pronunciations and meanings depending on the context. Nevertheless, studying it is great fun. I've learned approximately fifty kanji by now, which is a drop of the drop in the bucket that one should have to get along well in Japan. Matthew knows about a hundred. We recognize many others from having seen them over and over again, but we don't really know them — like, we can't write them, pronounce them, or tell you what they mean. But we enjoy making things up. Mostly, I enjoy making things up.

For example, there used to be a city in Akita Prefecture named Omagari. In Japanese, Omagari looks like this: 大曲. The first character means "big." I don't know what the second is, but I know what I think it looks like. To me, Omagari is "big factory."

Matthew and I have a few posters of Japanese characters hanging up in our study. We had the following conversation about them the other day:

SKD (pointing):　　元 looks like pi.
MAD: Actually, I think 刀 looks more like pi.
SKD: Maybe you're right. Hee, 刀 is near 当. Pi is near cake. (Doesn't it look like a slice of birthday cake with candles on top?)
MAD: This one means electric. 電. It's a dragon pulling lightning from the rain clouds. (The top part of the character is the kanji for rain.)
SKD: Cool. Oh hey, snow! 雪. It's rain on top of cake!
MAD: It's rain that falls in layers.
SKD: Layers — like cake!

Our Japanese teachers would be so proud.

Friday's typhoon brought lots of rain, not just here, but also upstream from here. So, the Waga river rose — a lot.

I took this picture on August 27, because I was impressed at how high the water level was. It was deep and fast. There are two tiers of tetrapods here. The lower level, which usually looks about like the upper level does in this shot, is nearly submerged. The concrete posts in the foreground are probably about four feet high.



Here's the scene on Saturday morning, after the typhoon. The little nubs you can see in the river (just to the right and below the center of the photo) are the tops of the concrete posts.



Although the water was impressively high on Saturday, it was down several feet from its highest point. The park where we walk the dogs was underwater sometime on Friday, but we didn't see it. We did see the neat line of grass clippings running along the hill, marking the highest water level.



By the time we were there, the water had receded pretty far — but not far enough that we could walk our regular course!



The water level has continued to go down since then, and now it's almost back to the level in the first photo.

I'm finally working, teaching English as expected. Ahhh. Working is nice, even though teaching English is not much like lawyering. There are similarities: lots of preparation, maintaining attention to detail, determining the needs of each class, considering different approaches to meeting those needs. I talk a lot slower in class, which my clients might appreciate when I get back, if it carries over.

Matthew and I occasionally get off work at the same time, so we ride our bikes home together in our business suits, messenger bags on our backs. We must look like the second leg of the Business Suit Triathlon. Mental note: do not let the Undoukai planning committee get wind of the Business Suit Triathlon, or we'll have a new event next year.

And I just got paid. Haven't gotten around to doing a jazz square in the living room, though.