High Water 

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.
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Working Girl 

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.
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Typhoon! 

No escaping it this time — there's definitely some typhoon going on outside. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the storm is powering up the middle of Honshu, so we're in for a drenching. It started raining hard at around 6:30 this morning, and has continued throughout the day. Although we haven't had terribly strong winds, they've blown hard enough to mostly uproot a couple of tall, shrubby weeds in front of the house. Window screens keep blowing open, too.

Usually, the dogs start pestering us for their walk at around 9:30. They love their walks, but they don't like rain (they're kind of prima donna-y that way). They're clearly attuned to the weather, as evidenced by their lying around this morning, even when I started getting their walk gear ready. Now, they usually respond to anything that could be interpreted as walk preparations (such as mucking about with plastic bags) with FRAP-ing (Frenetic Random Activity Pattern), wrestling, honking, howling, and paw-waving. This morning was more like this:

SKD: Guess what time it is! Don't you guys want to go walkies?
Moki: No. It is raining outside, and I do not like to get wet. (I imagine that Moki would speak very concisely if he could talk.)
Aki: NOOOOOO! It's all rainy! And my paws would get wet, and my head would get wet, and it's GROOOOOOOOSS outside! (I imagine that Aki would not.)

Nevertheless, we went for a walk along the Waga, which was running very high and fast. Water was smacking up against the rail bridge pilings looking like Coke float foam. The small islands that normally break up the river's path were almost completely submerged, with just some tall grasses and the upper halves of trees showing above the water. The river didn't appear to be in danger of overflowing, and we're on the other side of a high embankment, so I think we're in good shape even if it does.

Unfortunately, the combination of wind and rain appears to have taken down a neighbor's entire corn crop. There aren't enough tall, mature trees in town to cause the kinds of power outages and road blockages that Isabel caused in Maryland a few years ago.
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Waiting for Nattou 

My Japanese teacher lives near a pretty fantastic grocery store that I've started doing my Thursday shopping at for one main reason: it carries Akita nattou. Upon learning that he liked nattou, one of Matthew's students told him that he needed to try the really tasty nattou from Akita Prefecture, which is carried locally only by this store. Matthew does in fact like the Akita nattou quite a lot, so he's pretty happy when class day arrives so I can go to the store.

In addition to the nattou, this store is noteworthy for its samples. The first time I visited, one of those little plastic tables with a lidded bin containing toothpicks and a sample item on top sat in front of the seafood section. The sample du jour? Small bits of octopus tentacle. I wasn't really feeling tako that day, so I passed. Today's sample was raw tuna — mmm.

I also get my lunch here on class days, usually a salad with sesame dressing (man, I love that stuff) and a cute little dessert like a parfait. Today, none of the salads were calling to me, so I almost got a yakisoba sandwich. Then I realized that there was no way I could eat grilled noodles, meat, and yakisoba sauce in a hot dog bun without questioning the state of the universe, so I got a teriyaki chicken sammich, salad, and cute parfait instead. Mmm.

Gift update: We've gotten a pack of tissues each from an izakaya and a drugstore. I've also gotten a mix CD from a clothing store (Justice Style and Fashion, for all your Japanese hipster boy uniform needs!), I think by virture of being the gaijin chick who walked in and carried on a conversation with the clerk in Japanese. I felt bad for not buying anything, but I don't have Japanese hipster boy uniform (baggy jeans, tee shirt, and patterned short-sleeved button-down, worn unbuttoned) needs.
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Let's Biiru! 



Just some gift beer we enjoyed last night. Yum! The brewery is in Morioka (about an hour train ride away).
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Beautiful Day 



A glass of wine, some late summer fruit, and a picnic overlooking the Waga river. Who could ask for anything more? Even the dogs seemed to enjoy the fantastic weather.
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Autumn already? 



We had some hot days in August, but summer here is short — occasional splashes of yellow and orange are already appearing in the foliage.
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La Vida de los Inmigrantes 

Matthew and I just returned from a trip to the post office to send money to our bank in America. We kept our house in Silver Spring with its attendant mortgage, and I still have financial obligations related to my law license, so here we are: people who need to send money back to the home country. We're immigrants.

Maybe because we intend to return to America after a defined period of time, or maybe because we've maintained such concrete connections there in the forms of a house and a career, it doesn't always feel like we left. I expected to be much sadder when my plane left Washington that June morning, but taking off didn't feel like a break with home. And living here doesn't always feel like real life — it sometimes feels like a diversion from my real life in Washington. But then there are days like today, when we're converting yen to dollars in our minds as we send money home.

We've been immigrants since our respective moves, of course. There have been times that have made our immigrant status especially clear to us. We had to register with the city office, and now carry cards identifying us as legal residents of Kitakami. We both had to get permission to come here long term. We both had to apply for permission to work here, and are limited to working in a very specific field. It's strange to me that if, against the odds, I were to find a law job, I would have to go back to the immigration office to request permission to change fields. Registration is for immigrants. Work restrictions are for immigrants.

Then, there's the language issue. Matthew and I have decided that living in Japan at our respective Japanese skill levels is probably a bit like being illiterate. Everything is written in a language I don't understand. You learn things slowly, and maybe figure out some words, but even months down the road, you can still only make out limited things. This is tofu. My recipe called for silken tofu. Is this silken tofu? Is this burlap tofu? At least I know it's tofu. And 'tofu' starts to look weird after you've written it a bunch of times. We are both taking classes, but it still can be pretty hard to get by in the grocery or at restaurants. When I can't think of a word in Japanese, many times it comes to me in Spanish, my second language. This is not helpful, but my Japanese teacher tells me it is not unusual in third-language learners. Host country language classes are for immigrants.

We are really immigrants.
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Kintaro 



Kintaro is a hero of Japanese legend, a little boy riding a bear and wielding an axe. It's also the official nickname of the JR Freight EH500 locomotive. This one is northbound pulling a train of container flatcars.
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Paris in Japan 

I've always liked the rather romantic descriptions of life in Paris that involve someone doing the dinner shopping every day, usually on the way home from work. More specifically, I like the image of riding home on one's bike, baguette under the arm. That's not too far off from how things are here, except that Kitakami isn't full of quaint cobblestone streets and boulangeries. Also, my bag is usually full of things like nattou and udon, not baguettes.

Yesterday, I came close to living that image. Matthew and I hosted our first real dinner gathering in our teeny-tiny home. Previously, I've commented on my hangup about serving Japanese food to Japanese people. Our neighbor across the street gave us yet another bundle of tomatoes (I think that makes something like 42 pounds altogether), so I decided to make a simple tomato sauce for pasta. I biked to the nearby department store because it has a grocery with a largish selection of imported goods, patisseries, and a boulangerie — one-stop shopping for your Italian dinner party needs. I was very happy to locate a loaf of Italian-style bread, which isn't a baguette, but is close enough for image purposes. So there I was: cycling home, messenger bag bulging with lovely fresh fruit (Iwate local melon . . . mmm) and vegetables, a cheesecake and a long loaf of bread in another bag hanging off my arm. It's still too warm for berets, so no French hats were involved in the making of this dinner.
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