Japanese School Lunch "Mystery Meat"

In my long years as an elementary and middle school student eating American school lunch, there were many days when my classmates and I would poke the brownish and somewhat tasteless blobs on our plastic trays with a fork, speculating on their origins. I think an official monthly school lunch menu went home to our parents, stuffed in backpacks between the corrected math worksheets and penmanship practice pages, but after receiving it none of us thought of it again. Of course, it being America and all, there weren't that many options for where our mystery meat had come from-- beef, pork, or chicken? Fish was rare and always came in the form of recognizable breaded fish sticks.

I've eaten Japanese school lunch every day it's been available for 2 1/2 years, and there are many differences. In my small schools, the students generally eat in their classrooms; the food is made at a separate location and dropped off in latched metal containers. After dishing out the food, a student reads off the lunch menu posted in the classroom, just so everyone knows what they're about to dig their chopsticks into. Not only do we know what we're getting, there's a lot more variety of what I would've liked to call "mystery meat" (except thanks to the reader and the posted menu, there are no mysteries). Squid and octopus make regular appearances in stiry-fries, which is perhaps not surprising because my island is known for its delicious squid. I can almost count on a slab of baked or fried fish once a week and tofu incorporated into soup or a side dish 2-3 times/week. There's a fair share of chicken and pork, too, although beef is rather rare due to its relatively high cost. I got something new on my plate today, though.

Apparently Nagasaki Prefecture decided that this week would be "Cultural Foods Week," or something like that, with its school menu planners trying to include as many local/Nagasaki-grown foods as possible. Since Tsushima is technically part of Nagasaki, that included us.

I'm having difficulty in framing this story... I would like to express here my sincere regret that I ate said non-mystery meat item. And that my other prospective blog title was, "I Might've Eaten An Endangered Species Today."

When I first saw the precisely-cut bite-sized blocks of meat covered in miso-sesame sauce, I thought they were beef. And then someone said, "Oh yes. That's whale."

I was quite surprised, of course, even though I know that Nagasaki has a long history of whaling, and the Japanese taste for whale is still strong. Japanese marine "science teams" manage to come back with dead whales that they say are for research purposes and then later end up on the whale market. You can order whale at a bunch of upscale Japanese-style restaurants in Nagasaki city. It's so prohibitively expensive, though, I never thought I'd see it in Tsushima, especially not on my school lunch tray.

After an initial shocked silence, I asked what kind of whale it was. The school lunch planner/food orderer, who sits across from me, frowned and then admitted that she didn't know. It was simply "whale."

Knowing that the blobs on my plate might well be an endangered species, then, I felt even more wary of trying it. I could've said no. I probably should have (at least then I wouldn't have this post-meal guilt, to say nothing of the ethical concerns). There are a couple reasons why I didn't. First, there's an incredibly pressure in Japan to eat everything you're given for school lunch, even if it makes you gag. Unlike my American cafeteria where the end of lunch saw an industrial-sized garbage bag half-full with refuse (all those vegetables and lima beans we never wanted to eat), Japanese school kids generally aren't allowed to put any food back or throw it away. I've seen kids holding their noses trying to gag some of the stuff down, but gag it down they do. And there are constant speeches about "suki/kirai shinai," or "don't have/express likes or dislikes" for food. I think the point is that everything has a different kind of nutritional value and indeed, school lunches are planned out to excessive detail; you can look at the monthly menu and see exactly how many grams of protein are on your tray.

I have put my foot down a couple of times; I always refuse liver because the first time I tried it, I almost vomited. The 3rd-grade middle school students sitting near me at the time even edged their seats away. So no more liver.

Also, after arriving in the classroom I was scheduled to eat in, I could see that my students were eager to have whale. One student was absent today, and the others were janken (rock-paper-scissors) -battling to see who would get her share of whale. And it did look tasty, covered in miso-sesame sauce.

So rather than give my portion to my students, who would've been more than happy to devour it, I tried it. And I hope writing about the experience will alieviate at least some of my guilt. (did I mention that in my own cooking, I'm mostly vegetarian?) For the record: if I hadn't been told it was whale, my guess for the mystery meat would've been rather dry beef. After trying the first bite, I wondered if the school lunch planner was just pulling my leg. And then, why anyone would kill a whale to eat something so similar to beef.

It comes down to culture, I think: the Japanese have a history of whaling (and unlike America, they never stopped hunting whales, although now it is under the guise of scientific research... I wonder if Americans would've stopped if we'd been an island-nation), whereas beef is an import from the western powers that conquered them. Even if the two meats have a similar taste and consistency, it seems to be important for them to occasionally consume the product that makes them feel Japanese, the one that their ancestors consumed.

Where does that leave me with the brown blobs of potentially endangered species on my school lunch tray? Still guilty. Still looking for excuses to not saying no (it's not like I --ordered-- whale, and my consuming or not consuming it wouldn't have altered the whale market)... but, perhaps, also partaking in a cultural experience?

FLYing with FlyLady

I posted that one of my New Year's Resolutions was FLYing. What is FLYing?? It's a new project that I started in November. Anyone who's ever been in my room in Monmouth (or Smith dorm room) knows that I have a major problem with clutter. Really major! FLYing is a way to set routines and de-clutter your life and home.

My mother sent me the link to FLYing (www.flylady.net) last November, and as soon as I read "Are you living in CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome)?" I knew that this was something for me. In fact, I'd been meaning to have a few people over for awhile-- it was time for my annual Ladies' Christmas Bash, after all!-- but my apartment was so out of control that I didn't feel able to send out the invites. I'd have to do so much work to make it presentable, it didn't seem worth the effort for one evening.

Whoa, how my view has changed since then! Part of FLYing is realizing that YOU deserve a clean home; it's not just something for when company comes over! And you'd be a lot happier without your clutter; it weights you down and prevents you from doing things, like having a fun evening with friends because you don't want anyone to see it. So de-accessioning your clutter, ultimately, is about loving yourself enough to get rid of it. (There are many FLY-Lady slogans. One of them is: You can't clean clutter. You can only get rid of it! And clutter=anything that you do not need, love, or want.)

I have so many momento-like things in my apartment and room back home-- mugs, pamphlets from museums/aquariums/temples/other places I've been to during trips, tons of movie and entrance tickets, a lot of stuff I thought I would eventually scrapbook, stuff going back to my first year at college! Well, scrapbooking everything is simply not going to happen. It's kind of like blogging-- sometimes I just don't have time because I'm too busy doing stuff. When I stopped blogging last year, it was because I thought: I can live my life, or I can blog about it. There didn't seem to be enough time (outside of school, in a place where I had internet access) to do both. But even when I have time, I don't scrapbook. And, at this point, blogging is much easier and keeps just as good a record of everything. So out with the scrapbooking stuff!

FLYing has helped me to realize that even if I don't have the momentos (the stuff which seems important at the time but becomes clutter) to prove that something happened and was important to me, it still happened. My memory can be quite sporatic at times, so I think I was hanging onto things in order to remember them. But I don't really need, still love, or want T-shirts from my high school math club or 7 different TAM t-shirts. So when I was home over Christmas, I spent some time clearing out some of that clutter. There's still a lot left, but I made progress!

I'm still a bit amazed every time I come home to my Tsushima apartment. This past week I was finally able to clear all the clutter off my kitchen table; I seriously have not seen the full surface of that table since a few weeks after I moved in, back in August 2008! It's a bit chilly in the kitchen to eat meals there now, but I look forward to breakfasts there this spring. The last one I can remember having at that table was a 3 AM jet-lag granola snack in 2008. Everything is so much more open, too. There's plenty of room to roll out the yoga mat or play with the balance ball that I finally dug out of the closet!

The #1 FLYing commandment (if it can be called that)-- the first place you start-- is shining your sink and keeping it clean. I didn't really get it at first, but now I know: not having a clean sink is such a deterrent to any cooking. I'm not perfect, so some days there are dishes hanging out in the sink (although those days are getting fewer!). When I see the dishes, I think: Ugh! I have to clean up those dishes if I want to cook anything. ...having a clean kitchen slate to start with, so to speak, is very inspiring for cooking adventures. Everything's ready to go, I can use any pot or dish I want at a moment's notice. With a clean sink, I notice other clutter in the kitchen, too, and can deal with it a little at a time. And waking up in the morning to a clean and shined sink? Priceless.

October 2010 in Tsushima

Going back through my pictures, I've come to think that this back-blogging process may be more difficult than I thought. I already covered my fall trips (October-November) and the leaves changing in Tsushima (November), but I missed on-island events in October. So this blog will try to fill that gap ^^

All told, October is usually my most busy month. The past two years I've tried especially hard to have good Halloween lessons/parties for my students, which have included pinatas (sometimes made by me ahead of time, sometimes made by the students), eyeball relays, bobbing for mini-apples, and costume contests. I'm more able to plan more things with my students about Halloween than other holidays, in part because the teachers are accustomed to doing something Halloween-ish every year and in part because Halloween is easier to explain than, say, Easter or Christmas. (To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, "So, kids, Jesus died on the cross, so we eat chocolates because they're brown, which was the color of the cross..." Yeah, you go ahead and try to pull that off. I know all about the holiday's Pagan roots, of course, but 1st graders really don't get it. All Hallow's Eve is much easier, trust me).

Aside from lesson planning/party preparation, my overexhuberence for Halloween also meant that at least twice a week (and sometimes 3x), I would get up extra-early to make myself look like this:

Dressing up as a clown replete with make-up definetely makes the Top Ten list of Fun Things I've Done in Tsushima. (Right up there with swinging down a crazy tarzan rope at a park with O or risking my life on the grass slide in Mine). It was best my first year, in 2009; how the heads turned! And the kids would run up, not knowing who it was at first, screaming, "PIEROOOOO! PIEROOOOOOO!" (The Japanese for "clown," from the French). 2010 was still fabulous, though. My usually-subdued taxi drivers still burst into uncontrollable laughter whenever I came out of the apartment in the morning, a police officer came running after me to take a picture, and a woman I'd never met before thrust her infant into my arms and snapped her keitai-camera away. A clown in full make-up is clearly not something Tsushimians see every day.

It was equally fun for me, as was torturing my students with pinatas (and forcing their students to only help by calling out directions in English-- "Left, left!" "No, right!"), elementary students....

...and junior high-school students alike.

Gosh, how I'll miss my Nanyo JHS kids.

Good sports, all.

Not only were my weeks filled with Halloween activities, but sometimes the weekends were too. Izuhara had its public Halloween Trick-0r-Treating event again this year, and with what I think was indisputably but unofficially dubbed the best ALT costume, I was stationed at the prime spot in front of Tiara. My former BOE head, a nice man who always smiled and joked with me, came out to volunteer. I tried to give him some clown-tips.

At the Nagasaki mid-year conference, I went shopping for emergency gaijin rations (including flavored oatmeal and powdered sugar) in the YuMeSaito basement grocery store and found some mini apples in packs that weren't that expensive. I'd wanted to do bobbing for apples with my Nanyo elementary kids, but with prices on-island as they were had decided it was too expensive. With the mini-apple find, though, we were in business!

I think everyone had a good time ^^

Outside of the classroom, Tsushima continued to amaze me with its beauty. I saw this moon-rise on the way south, near the Manseki bridge that connects the northern and southern islands.

And one of my favorite Tsushima flowers (rivaled by the hydragneas in June), the "multiple amaryllis," came into bloom in September-October.

I love how they bloom in clusters!

...and this was all just along the side of the road!

The other thing that kept me busy in October were many taiko concerts. Seriously, between August-October this year we played in about 8 concerts, all on different weekends. One of the more memorable performances was a trip to Unijima, a one of the locations of the Self-Defence Force's bases. It also meant that I got to ride in a small (non-ferry) boat away from Tsushima for the first time.

'Bye, mountains!

...there were mini-islands between Tsushima and Unijima, too.

The base was highly-regulated, so I didn't take any pictures (just in case.. didn't want my camera confiscated!). We were met at the dock by an escort and taken to a room to wait. We were scheduled to play at a reception-party celebrating the X0th year of the base's operation, and since all of the guests had to come by boat, we had to arrive very early... which meant a lot of waiting around in that room, with guards posted outside to make sure we didn't wander where we weren't supposed to. It was a beautiful little island, though, I wish I could've walked around the coast a bit.

Another taiko performance took me to Nita's Horse Festival, which I've been wanting to go to for awhile but always somehow missed. The festival features horse races between Tsushima's mini-horses; they look like ponies to me, but they are apparently horses. Just very small.

(both men in this picture are of average Japanese size.)

I went early to the festival to watch some of the races--

It was pretty cool! I'd never seen live horse-races before. There wasn't any betting going on, it was just good-natured fun.

One of the last events of the day was a relay race between a Tsushima horse-team and a team of local junior high school students....

....yeah, the kids really did win. Although the horses were catching up in the end and probably would've won in the course had been longer ^^

There was a mama-horse and her baby, too. Way cute!

And what would fall in Tsushima be without shiitake mushrooms? I received a couple of bags of them this year from various people, including one that really was bigger than my face.

Yes, it really is a mushroom!

It was quite delicious sauteed in butter and then put into an omelette!

Last Tsushima Autumn

This back-blog will focus on my last Tsushima autumn (October-November 2011).

As the date of submitting my recontracting form approaches, with its boxes of "Yup, sign me up for another year!" and "Nope, I'm soooooooo done!" I'm starting to think of the end as coming soon, even though there's technically 6 months left before I have to leave. It doesn't help that my two favorite schools, Nanyo JHS and Toyo JHS, will close this April. I walked into work the other day at Nanyo JHS, and there were big stickers on just about everything-- the photocopier, printers, all the chairs and desks in the teacher's room-- which had kanji on them that translated to "things to prepare [for removal elsewhere]." It's easy to see, now, how the pieces of that school community will be scattered. Farewell to desks, farewell to bookcases and umbrella stands and the big red welcome rug.

The stickers are just a visual reminder of the end of the school and my time here; I've been thinking of "my last--" and "my last--" for awhile now, and it's a rather mixed bag. ("My Last Halloween Party at Nishi Elementary" was rather sad, while "My Last Christmas Lesson With ADHD Kids" and "My Last 14-Hour Chicago to Tokyo Flight" had more of an upbeat note). With that mindset--

It was a good last autumn in Tsushima. My hiking group, which since last June has taken me to such far-flung island places as Waniura and the Jo-yama fortress ruins in Kechi, assembled in November to make a tour around Shushi. I thought we were just walking the normal Shushi Maple Leaf Road, but nope, it was a pit-stop at an old man-aquaintence's house for freshly-harvested sweet potatoes and then off to the wilds of Shushi in search of the perfect sweet potato roasting spot (preferrably off the beaten track, by a river overshadowed by trees in full fall glory). We drove most of the way in on a dirt road, found a spot, gathered dry wood, and roasted our taters.

My first authentic yaki-imo!!

They were quite delicious and my first authentically roasted-in-an-open-fire Japanese sweet potatoes. Hard and charred on the outside, buttery-yellowy orange on the inside and melt-in-your-mouth amazing. Of course, afterwards we had to work off all the yummy sweet potato goodness by hiking back out to the main road. As with our other trips, the vans had a tendency to drop us off in the middle of nowhere and then just leave.

When we found the vans again, surprise surprise, we headed to the normal Shushi Maple Leaf Road and walked that, too, for good measure. It never ceased to amaze me how the hiking group leader could overestimate how much ground we could cover in one day and, on the other hand, how much we actually managed, considering the average mean age of the group members was about 55, with a median closer to 65. (My presence seriously skews the stats).

Here are some of the more choice foliage shots-- gotta love Japanese maple trees for their beauty, even if they fail at producing the tiniest morsel of sap for maple syrup :)

The following weekend, I made a pilgrimage to Tokyo to meet up with friends made at the PSG/PA Conference in October-- which was amazing, by the way, mostly for a rather wild evening spent on the shore of Odaiba, an island just off central Tokyo and easy to get to via underwater train... frolicking on the shore (rather tipsily) and watching the city lights reflected in the water.. and on the train back to town, getting my first glimpse of Tokyo Tower through the skyscrapers, its white and orange magnificence brightly-lit against the starry sky. Okay, so that part was mainly awesome because I didn't know that we'd be able to see it (it just --emerged-- from between the skyscrapers!), and the experience was rather like some of the scenes in my dearly-beloved JHS anime, Cardcaptor Sakura. Oh, and the conference itself was excellent, by far the best (possibly only?) JET conference where I received information relevant to my JET experience that wasn't simple common sense. Highly useful for PSG work as well. Aaaaaaaand in the few free hours I had (a morning here, and evening there), I managed to get to a few art museums and see incredible works-- one of Van Gogh's sunflower paintings and many of Rodin's sculptures, including The Thinker (original miniature and later larger-than-life versions) and The Gates of Hell. Who knew that Ueno Park held such wonders? Heck, you don't even need to pay the art museum's admission price to see the most famous pieces! (I was waiting at the gates for the museum to open in the morning and once let in somehow rushed straight past the small but hedgy garden with the famous Rodins... I didn't see them until after wandering through the museum, eyes peeled, leaving wondering if the statues had been sent away for cleaning or something).

Anyway, such incredible people as those I met at the PSG conference were worth another trip to Tokyo, so I went back in mid-November to meet up with some of them and do all those Tokyo touristy things that I'd always wanted to do but never had time to.

I spent most of my nights there in a very nice guest-room of a very generous host, Bryan of the PSG Conference. I really can't sing his praises enough. Not only was Bryan okay with me showing up at his apartment a little past 1 AM (due to delayed flights, etc), after my arrival he even stayed up to chat and plan for the next day: our excursion to a wine festival in Gunma Prefectural. (Okay, so perhaps I will rag on Bryan a little. Despite living on mainland Japan-- and the main mainland, Honshu, at that-- Bryan's Japanese prefectural geography could use a little work. Turns out the wine festival-- and we-- ended up in Ibaraki Prefecture. Which is kind of like saying you're going to Pennsylvania and end up in Rhode Island, but still. It was a tad awkward explaining to the Japanese peeps back on Tsushima why I didn't have any Gunma omiyage/presents for them.)

The next day dawned brightly, but we weren't up to see it. Nope, it was by sure strength of habit, through years of being a morning person, that I woke up a little past 7:30. (I should like to briefly point out that this was the second time that a male traveling companion had set his Japanese keitai alarm, which never went off, and later realized that it was on a Mon-Fri-only setting when we wanted to get up on a Saturday morning... so beware, complicated-keitai owners! Yeah, you wanted the fancy camera and keypad, but remember that you're going to need the mental alacrity to navigate complicated settings at 2:30 AM if you want a decent alarm to work the next morning).

Well, all that meant was that we weren't going to be drinking our wine before noon, which was okay with me. We made the many train transfers and arrived in the early afternoon to a sunny hillside of straggly-looking vineyards and a bunch of drunk Japanese and foreigners alike.

It was fairly awesome, actually. You pay about $12 and get a wine glass, a commemorative button, a corkscrew, and your choice of red wine, white wine, or sparkling cider (and let me tell you, no one was getting cider). Yup, your own full bottle and the means to open and appreciate it in a semi-dignified style. It was no wine-from-a-box, either; the stuff was pretty decent, especially after the first glass. There were lots of snack-y food stalls, too, including the most overpriced bread and Camembert cheese that I've ever seen in Japan.

Oh, and we got a special greeting on the way in from a bunch of grapes (he was a bit sour, I think it was his break-time).

Many glasses of wine, interesting conversations, staring at the sky, and mutual snuggles with a highly gay (and boyfriend-ed) ALT later... the sun dipped behind the hills, it started to get chilly, and it was time to get in a never-ending line of drunk people waiting for a bus back to the main train station. Really, there must've been at least 300 people waiting in line, but for all of that it moved fairly quickly.

We had to pass through a station on the Tokyo metro loop to get back to Bryan's place in Saitama and decided to make a detour to Akihabara for my first Tokyo-touristy thing: visiting a maid cafe.

Let me first write that it wasn't at all what I expected it to be... somehow I'd gotten a burlesque-y or sexy image of maid cafes, probably because they have a generally negative image. The random one I went to was quite the opposite, in fact. Yeah, the maids were wearing kind of short skirts, but they were festooned in ribbons and billowing frills too. The inside of the cafe looked more like a kindergarten than a place to sit down and have a drink: bright pastel colors, stuffed animals tucked into corners.. everything screamed "Cute!!!" Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to take any pictures inside maid cafes (except for your food, and that's after your waitress is safely esconed back in the kitchen). You are allowed to pay to take a picture with anyone on the waitstaff, which I did, but out of respect for their privacy I won't post any pictures. The costumes were interesting, too: while the waitresses were decked out in frills, the kitchen staff dressed androgynously. I couldn't help but think of takarazuka actresses. For the most part, though, the cafe was all about cute, even down to the ketchup drippings on my hamburger curry plate:

Quite the opposite from being about sexiness, I think maid cafes offer nonsexual environments for overworked and way stressed-out salarymen to go and forget they're an adult with problems and worries. It's like all the 'cute' characters that are popular at the moment-- they're basically big balls of fuziness, like Winnie the Pooh. No gender roles. At least, that's what the kindergarden-like decor of the cafe made me think... once you enter the door, you can be a kid again. Play dress-up, wear some rabbit ears. Sing a silly song (complete with guestures) with the babysitter--er-- waitress-- about powering-up the delicious of your food.

I found the whole maid cafe experience fun but baffling. I don't think I'd go back just because of the prices; if I'm going to pay just to walk in the door, I'd rather go to a kitty cafe with sure-you-can-pet-me-just-don't-ruffle-the-fur cats lounging everywhere.

Maid cafes definetely fit in with Akihabara's geeky let's-pretend-we're-someone-else mentality, though. Oh, and I finally got to see Akihabara at night with anime billboards:

From Akihabara, Bryan and I went to nichome, the gay district, before heading back. For all I've heard about the place, it was a bit disappointing. I mean, seeing a few drag queens dancing and mingling with customers overflowing onto the street outside of the bar was sort of cool. And we went into a different gay bar later (me masked in the most androgynous fashion I could manage on short notice because we thought it was men-only at first), which featured waiters decked out in briefs and neckties-- only-- wading through the crowds with drinks. But all of nichome, together, was only about a city block, and it was quite male-oriented at that. I guess I just thought there would be more... NoHo was so much more lesbian-friendly than nichome, the most gay area in all of Japan.

We went back fairly early because I wanted to get up and off to my next Tokyo touristy spot the next day-- Kamakura! Now, for someone who's interested in devoting the next 6-8 years of her life to studying Kamakura-period Buddhist literature in grad school, actually going to the place that your time period of interest is named after is quite thrilling. It's the place that Taira no Yoritomo went (moving the political capitol of Japan with him) after willing against the Heike (insert many groans here about _The Tale of the Heike_ and boastful warrriors decked out in distinctive costumes). Its most famous icon is a giant Buddha statue that Yoritomo had built and that you can actually go inside of. So yes, I was quite psyched to visit Kamakura.

Knowing that seeing the Big Buddha would probably be the highlight of the day but also the most tourist trappy, I started at some of the quieter temples for a contemplative beginning. My favorite temple of the day was Tokeiji, of historical renown and nicknamed the "Divorce Temple."

Historical plaque outside of the temple:

Aside from the cool historical background, I liked Tokeiji because it had a variety of intriguing small plants. I don't think they were planted on purpose, but then again, many of the postcards in the gift shop were of similar small plants. They weren't obviously set apart or being particularly looked after, but I found myself walking down the temple paths looking for the next microcosm of beauty.

The graves and some of the other temple features had an untouched look about them. I just love moss growing over Japanese graves and grass growing in thatch.

The next stop of my Kamakura to-go list required a bit of a trek, but it was so worth it. I went to launder my money, Shinto-style! Yup, there is a sacred spring in Kamakura, and if you wash your money in it (and then go spend it), the money will increase and come back to you! Here's a neat little plaque from outside the shrine linking this awesome bit of premodern entrepreneurship with my pal Yoritomo:

Well, I'd gone all that way, I just had to launder my money in the sacred shrine! Knowing I'm going to be a poor grad student soon (with any luck! ..but that's a different shrine for a different day, Tenmangu-Dazaifu in February!), one shouldn't pass up on business deals like this from the gods.

Washing my moola:

Oh, and the spring was in this cool cave, too, with gourds and peace-cranes hanging from the ceiling. Wild place, really.

With the sun starting to sink low, it was time to continue on the crazy mountain path...

...and onto the great Buddha!

Unfortunately, I'd gotten too late a start to manage everything. The entrance to the inside of the Big Buddha was closing just as I arrived. I'll have to save the inside of the Buddha for another trip. I did, however, manage to capture how touristy it is--

--a cheap shot of me being as Buddist as the Buddha--

--and some nice close-ups thanks to my camera's awesome zooming power.

Coincidentally, I'd gone to Tokyo the same weekend that Harry Potter opened in theaters there, so there were tons of posters all around the Kamakura train stations:

..but despite the great temptation to go see it then and there, I managed to hold off because I'd promised the AFU that we'd watch it together when I went home for Christmas.

The next morning saw me bidding farewell to Bryan early and heading off to Tokyo DisneySea. I'd heard i t was a bit cooler in terms of atmosphere than Disneyland, and I'd already been to Disneyland once in Florida way back in elementary school. DisneySea Tokyo was in turns shocking, perplexing, and magical.

The real shocker for me was DisneySea's version of New England. They had a little town set up with shops, etc, that I think was supposedly made in the image of Cape Cod but could've fit the bill of any New England-y coastal down.. with a few changes. First, it was olde towne style, with signs for bobbins and top hats to add to the atmosphere.

Oh, and there was a Titanic-like ship in port:

...but wait, was it not Cape Cod at all, but NYC?

But Minnie Mouse clearly thought she was at Cape Cod, looking into the distance at the greatest atrocity of DisneySea...

..a lighthouse barely bigger than a person, posing as something actually useful.

Even I have to admit that downtown looked pretty good, though... lots 'o Christmas cheer.
..but was this really necessary?

(anyone who's anyone from Maine could tell you that each lobersterman has his/her own individual buoys. So either the above lobster-catching family is a bit whacky with a new buoy each week, or they're buoy pirates).

Yeah, you catch lobster.

You may catch a big fine, too, for all those stolen buoys.

Port-side:

More "Olde Towne" touches... but Pequod St. sounds familiar for some reason.

My favorite part of DisneySea may have been the big show on the water in the early afternoon. It was "Mystic" something and involved a long and convoluted ancient-Greek-myth-esque story, which was narrated over the loudspeakers in Japanese, with lots of exciting music. The important thing for you to know is that it also involved a bunch of crazy magical boats which started out having egg-shaped things on them... they later opened up and projected towers with famous Disney characters or singers/mystical beings perched on top. I really, really liked the boats!

Singer perched on top of a boat:

And ski-doos racing about with kites:

Grand master of ceremonies Mickey:

The wings on the dragons really moved!

This unicorn flapped its wings and reared on hind legs--

See? ^^

The other cool but a bit cheesier-part of DisneySea were the rides. My favorite was:

Most of the ride takes place inside a big volcano-like structure. At the exciting finale, you meet a Bal-roc-like Earth beastie, shoot up a steep hill, and then fly down the other side; the stomach-dropping feeling is quadrupled by a brief glimpse of open sky; the volcano is slightly open on one side to let you see just how far up you are (and how much further you get to fall).

Another thing I liked about DisneySea were the things you could look at while waiting in line; I don't think there was anything special about waiting in line in Florida when I was in elementary school, but all of the rides had interesting things for the waiting-in-line people to get into the atmosphere of their upcoming ride.

This experimental apparatus was part of the Journey to the Center of the Earth line waiting-area.

Another thing I liked about DisneySea was the fact that on certain rides, most of the time single riders (people who come to the park alone) get to be in their own fast waiting-line. For rides like Journey to the Center of the Earth, for example, 6 people could fit into one car; if the groups at the head of the line add up to an odd # of people, then someone from the single-rider line is put in. This basically meant that while other riders were waiting upwards of 2 hours for some rides, I got into a few of them after only 45 minutes of waiting. It wasn't available for many rides, though, and after a certain point in the day not at all.

One of my favorite Disney movies as a kid was The Little Mermaid, so I especially going to the Ariel's Castle part of the park.

This looked like a pretty coral structure from far away, but up close you can tell it's an under-the-sea Christmas tree! (note the starfish-star on top!)

Most of the Little Mermaid-themed rides were inside of the castle structure and meant for little kids; think the underwater equivalent of Dumbo's Flight or carousel rides. I didn't go on any of the, but they looked pretty cool.

I ended the day by doing another Tokyoish thing I've always wanted to do: stay in a capsule hotel! They're sort of like the equivalent of Japanese hostels. You pay a small amount (~2500 yen in my case, or about $30) and get a bed to sleep on plus use of the communal bath/bathroom. For a safe space to crash in Tokyo, clean sheets to boot, it was rather a steal.

The cool thing about capsules is that they are stacked. Instead of open bunk beds, it is what it says: a capsule, or enclosed space.

You can judge from my big LL Bean backpack how big my capsule was. The protrusion in the upper-left corner is my own personal TV!

Thus ends my fall trip to Tokyo-Kamakura-Disneyland.

Fall in Tsushima is followed closely by the unofficial start of mikan season. I say unofficial because Tsushima mikan aren't readily available in supermarkets (at least in The North) until mid-January, but they can easily be found at farmer's stands in the south in early November. Rather than just picking up a bunch there, though, the true mikan connoisseur-- and I do believe I've earned that term-- goes to one of the mikan farms for a U-Pick mikan extravaganza! It's quite a deal, really. You pay 200 yen to pick, which is a stellar price for an all-you-can-eat mikan buffet, and then pittances more per kilo for what you want to bring home. The local farmers encourage pickers to sample various trees and sizes of mikan before picking mikan to fill their bags.

And they are quite right to, as well. Different trees have different ratios of mikan sweet/tartness as well as juciness and size. What is most delicious is in the mind-- or, rather, tastebuds-- of the picker.

I prefer fresh-off-the-tree-in-November mikan to 'aged' mikan in February because the fresh November mikan are less sweet. By picking mikan in Nov-Dec and letting them sit around for a few months in storage, the mikan are allowed to condense their flavors. While the mikan skins in November hug the fruit tightly, by February the fruit has shrunk inwards on itself; this makes for easier peeling, a perk, but also means that the mikan's sweetness is more concentrated. By the end of the mikan supermarket shelf-season in March/April, I think they're pretty darn sickly-sweet.

Even directly off the tree, though, there are varying levels of sweetness. When I went mikan-picking in 2009, I had only begun my mikan education. I found the perfect tree and picked my 5 kg from it. This past trip in 2010, I tried to branch out more. I went with Jesse, one of the 'newbie' ALTs (he's a newbie to me even if he has been here almost 6 months now.. it's like a college "ickle firstie" thing), and Oliver, and we ate our way from tree to tree. Unfortunately this year there have been some mikan mold problems, so our ranging was limited to a line of trees instead of the entire hillside orchard, but it was still much more than enough to end the day with tummies and bags full of mikan. And I believe we can add a new rule to the books about Tsushima mikan: for fresh-off-the-tree, the bigger=the sweeter! (This rule does not apply to mikan from other places. In fact, I think the opposite would be true for Kagoshima mikan, where the Sakurajima mini-mikan are well-known, at least to any good Sakurajima local, to be the sweetest and the best in the prefecture. Oh the joys of travel and the mikan encountered while on the road!)

Here's an eyeful of succulent orange orbs:

And two of the sampling connoisseurs: