Drivin' 

Hachimantai is a mountain and national park that straddles the border between Iwate and Akita. It's also the scene of the "Aspite Line", a very scenic drive that crosses the mountain near its summit. Even in May, there was plenty of snow near the top.



On the Iwate side, there are alleged to be some spectacular views. All we saw was fog, though.



And here's the view when we finally got our oscillation overthruster working.



(Photos by Robert Davis. Hi, Dad!)

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Dancing the Bad Luck Away 

Earlier this month, we attended Jinku Matsuri in Esashi, a small town south of Kitakami. Jinku Matsuri is a festival featuring dances performed by people from Esashi who are celebrating their 25th or 42nd birthdays. 25 and 42 are traditionally yakudoshi years for men, but both men and women performed in the dance groups or in their accompanying music groups.

Prior to the featured dances, local children danced in a parade that passed through the main festival ground.



The 25-year-olds made a big impression with their wicked hairstyles, and later with their original music and dance. The amount of energy they created in the festival ground was amazing.



The excitement was amplified by the 42-year-olds' entry. Seriously ¡½ the 25-year-olds' musicians played with a lot of drive, but when the 42-year-olds took over the parade song, they did so with a huge BOOM! of drums and more complex movements. It was wild.



They also provided a flash of style during their original dance.


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On the Rocks 

Having visitors is the perfect prod to do all the things you've wanted to do, but haven't. Like going to the Iwate coast — it's so close, and yet we'd never been. So on a beautiful Tuesday morning, we prepared for a day trip to the coast, stopping at Hige-oyaji's place for breakfast. We told him our plans; he got really excited and animatedly told us to go to the Goishi Kaigan to see Kaminari-iwa, "Thunder Rock." Kaminari-iwa is a longish outcropping of rock running parallel to a cliff. Ocean water charges through the gap between them, creating a huge "BOOM!" as it does, hence the name. Because he's awesome, Hige-oyaji hooked us up with an outfit running small speedboat cruises around the sights in that area, including through the Kaminari-iwa gap.

From the shore, Kaminari-iwa looks very cool, and the movement of the water through the gap is mesmerizing.



You get way more of the "thunder rock" effect from land than on the ocean.

The turnaround part of the boat trip took us through Anatoshiiso, a rock formation rather resembling a giant, rocky set of brass knuckles. On the initial approach, it was not at all clear to us that our speedboat was going to fit through that middle hole.



It did, thanks to the careful maneuvering of the boat pilot.
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O-hanami 

One of the main reasons our houseguests chose to visit us in the spring was the sakura ¡½ o-hanami, or flower-viewing, is a big deal in Japan. The Japan Meteorological Association publishes "sakura forecasts" throughout the spring so that people can plan their o-hanami trips accordingly. Additionally, some organizations have ranked the "best sakura-viewing locations" throughout Japan; JR features Tenshochi on its posters as one of the three best places in northern Tohoku.

O-hanami is about more than just looking at the flowers. Restaurants, civic groups, or just groups of friends plan picnics with lots of food and drink in prime blossom-viewing locations. This year, the blossoms came about two weeks early, so by the time our houseguests arrived, the sakura were mostly gone from Kitakami. Nevertheless, we joined the local Okinawan joint's o-hanami party in one of the last parks to have blossoms. The day itself was not optimal for picnicking under the remaining sakura, being all cold and gray. So we made plans to go to Fukusenji, a temple in nearby Tono, with some friends the following day.

At Fukusenji, we found the trees in full bloom. So did busloads of tourists from other parts of Japan.



Many other trees were coming to life at the same time. On a small overlook, sakura and leafing yamamomiji (mountain maple) trees shared the view.


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The Great Butter Shortage of '08 

Rice shortages have been in the news over the last month or so as rice-exporting countries have begun withholding supplies to feed their own people. The shortages don't appear to be affecting Japan, but the country is running low on something important: butter. For the last three weeks or so, finding butter in the stores has been hit or miss, but mostly miss. The stores kindly post signs apologizing for the lack of butter, which is cold comfort when you're contemplating dry toast for breakfast.

Japan isn't generally perceived as being a dairy-centric country, so the butter deficit seems kind of surprising. To be sure, there are Japanese dairies and the Japanese do eat things like yogurt, cheese, and, ice cream. But dairy products aren't a staple in the Japanese diet like they are in the American diet, even as bread (and consequently butter) consumption has increased. None of the other dairy products appear to be in low supply (although I did notice a dearth of imported cheese today), either. Just butter.

I did find a decent supply of butter in the second store I visited today, but refrained from frantically purchasing all of it.
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Let's Vacation! 

Sorry for the lack of new postings over the past week; we've been busy with houseguests. We're going on a road trip tomorrow, so we'll be offline for about a week. See you when we get back!
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If the Shoe Fits, Make Sure It's Easy to Get Out Of, Too 

Even though I've lived here for almost a year, I'm still dealing with my stash of completely impractical shoes on a daily basis.

You see, while my Doc Martens combat boots, open-toed strappy sandals with three-inch heels, and knee-high zip-up boots are perfectly fine for an American life, they're not so great in Japan. Living here means taking your shoes off whenever you enter your house, someone else's house, and many restaurants. Most Japanese wear simple slip-on shoes or low shoes like oxfords that can be tied loosely enough to slip off and then on again with the aid of a shoehorn (everyone has a shoehorn). Mules and ballet flats are popular choices for women. They're often worn with very short socks so that when you take them off, you're not walking around in your bare feet or sticking them in community slippers.

I, on the other hand, am usually the last one into or out of the house or restaurant because I need to unzip or untie my boots. "I'll catch up" is my new mantra. The three-inch heels are generally fine, but being open toed, they don't really lend themselves to even tiny socks (although that doesn't seem to stop the Japanese). After an ego-destroying trip to try buying pants, I haven't tried to purchase any kind of clothing in Japan, so I'm still working with what I brought, practicality be damned. Also, I love my shoes, so they're staying.

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Ready? Here We Go! 

There comes a time in many expatriates' lives when they have to trade a significant privilege in their home country for the same privilege in another. It's a privilege borne of study, practice, near-misses, frayed nerves, and hours upon hours spent standing in line in a soul-sucking fortress, listening to Phil Collins on endless loop, waiting your turn for someone to be mean to you. Repeatedly. I'm talking about drivers' licenses, of course, and our time has come.

We went to the main driving center in Morioka yesterday to start the process of changing our U.S. licenses over to Japanese ones. We'd heard that they'd turn us away if we didn't have a translator with us, but Matthew had been so successful in scheduling our appointment in Japanese that we decided to risk it and go ourselves. Expecting a standard-issue MVA/DMV experience, we took lots of reading material and braced ourselves.

We actually got to the driving center early, so we were really prepared to wait. Instead, the guy Matthew had spoken to earlier came to get him about five minutes after we checked in. We had separate interviews, which made me nervous because of my weaker language skills. To my relief, the interviewer was very kind and patient, even though he called me by my middle name the whole time: Kay-san (more accurately, Kei-san).

He apparently felt that our driving experience was good enough to take the written and driving tests, so he set us up with the paperwork for those. After all of that was done, he took us out to the photo machine to get the necessary pictures. The voice on the machine encouraged us to "relax" ourselves for the photo. "Ready? Here we go! 3, 2,1 *click* Thank you! Please wait for your photo to print." Seriously ¡½ the photo machine was nicer than any DMV employee I've ever encountered.

Total time? An hour and a half. We still have to take and pass the tests to get our licenses, but we're on our way, and have nothing but warm fuzzies for the Iwate driving center people.
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The End of the Blog as We Know It 

Some of you have surely noticed we've been posting less and less often over time. Matthew's been here just over a year, and Stefanie's been here almost a year. We've seen (and commented on) Kitakami in all seasons, and we're running out of things to say.

And, it seems that lately we've been busier than ever with new hobbies, classes, and friends (and a crazy work schedule).

After much discussion among the management of Let's Sharing, we've made the painful decision to end the blog now, before it goes into too much decline. We'd rather go out while we're on top than let it devolve into a bland blog of infrequent and boring posts.

We want to thank everyone for coming by, and for all your comments.
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Traditional Clothes 

Earlier today, I had lunch with my koto teacher and her other students. After the lunch, the Japanese students showed the three foreign students how to wear kimono, the traditional Japanese robe. Getting into full kimono is an elaborate process, so they only did simple kimono for us.

Here, the women are working together to tie another student's obi:



And here's an example of the finished product:



I'm told that the clouds-and-flowers pattern on this kimono is a classic one. The colors are beautiful, aren't they?
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