Yesterday Julie and I took our last train out of Noheji for a long, long time.  Tomorrow we’ll be flying back to America where I’ll resume teaching high school math and Julie will begin a master’s program in library science.

There’s a lot that should probably be said in this post, but at the moment I’m at a loss for words.  Perhaps I’ll get some ideas on our ten hour flight tomorrow evening.

For now I will simply say “thank you” to all the wonderful people we met and befriended during our stay in Noheji.  I’m not sure there’s anything we can do to repay you for the kindness you showed to us.  どうもありがとうございました！

I suppose it was inevitable, but Julie and I have recently started collecting records.  We were finally convinced after hearing the sound quality of some albums on vinyl that our friend played for us a few weekends ago.  I don’t think we’ll take it too seriously or anything but over the years to come I imagine we’ll gradually accumulate some of our favorite albums and spin them while we relax at home.  

Of course it’s also fun to go digging around for old, forgotten records.  We were able to do just that in the tiny town of Hiranai and the following week in the city of Hachinohe.  

Here’s the recycle shop in Hiranai with the records.  I can’t remember if we’ve blogged about this place before or not, but it’s absolutely amazing.  All sorts of antiques, toys, clothes, and appliances.  You can find anything from cooking utensils to traditional wooden dolls to bed frames to analog synthesizers to a kanji printing press.    And, of course, there is a huge cache of records.  

Stuff we found:  

Takeshi and the Blue Jeans. This is without a doubt our best find. On this record the band plays surf rock versions of traditional Japanese folk songs with the electric guitar carrying the melody. So why does the album cover look so rebellious? Well, when these guys were making music, the electric guitar was pretty controversial. I’ve read reports that an attempt was made to ban the instrument from being played in public places (though obviously those efforts were in vain).  

Takeshi and his band were heavily influenced by the Ventures as were thousands of other young people in Japan in the ’60s.  In fact if you look close enough you can see the Ventures logo on the headstock of the guitar.  The Ventures continue to play hundreds of shows in Japan every year.  They’ve sold more albums in Japan than the Beatles.  Later this month I’ll get a chance to see them live in Misawa.  

Theme from the show "God Mars," an animated robot show that aired from 1981-1982.

Our main find in Hachinohe was a collection of Ishida Ayumi 45s.  Julie and I became fans of Ishida a couple of years ago.  

One last story about the recycle shop in Hiranai.  While were browsing the aisles I came across a set of four records that appeared to be a collection of nationalistic/military songs from the early 1900s through World War II.  The set was in perfect condition and included several photos and some sort of informational essay that accompanied it.  We couldn’t believe we found it.  It was like finding an important historical document and made the other records we found seem like 40 year old candy wrappers.  

So we brought it to the counter and then owner said, in Japanese of course, “Oh this record.  Was it over there?  Oh, I see, well, I’m sorry about it’s not for sale.  It’s my personal record.  Sorry.”  

It was disappointing but at the same time he can appreciate that record in ways we’ll never be able to so it’s just as well.  We’re just glad it won’t be tossed into the trash anytime soon.

Yesterday, we drove to Aomori City to get Taylor some new glasses.

What do you think?

Oh wait, here’s the real thing:

A few weeks back I saw some junior high students using a stick to poke at what looked to be an albino bat.  Upon closer inspection, it was actually an enormous moon moth.

Its wingspan was longer than the distance between the tip of my middle finger and my wrist.

Green.

So last month we finally got around to visiting the art center in the nearby city of Towada.  Here are some photos we took outside the building.  Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures of the cool exhibits inside but we definitely recommend paying the price of admission to see them in person.

The only other thing I’ll add before posting pictures is that on this day it was extremely hot and we gladly gulped down some iced coffee later at the art center’s cafe.  Our barista was one of our friends who is something of an artist herself.

Also, the people who made all this stuff are apparently pretty famous.

So it’s been a while.  Many of you who have been keeping up with our Flickr photos probably already know that Julie’s parents visited us a few weeks ago.  We’ll have a post or two of the trip up in a few days.

In the meantime we thought we’d write about a few things that happened to us since our last post (nearly three months ago).

After our big trip to Nagano we more or less went into money saving mode.  In early January we took advantage of the generous teacher discount (free day passes and rentals) at our local ski hill and went downhill skiing as much as possible on the weekends.  We also started cooking more meals at home which gave us an excuse to learn some traditional Japanese recipes.  Look for a food entry in the near future with lots of photos of our favorite dishes.

Towards the end of the month we got a little burned out on skiing and found other things to do in our free time.  I spent a big chunk of time in January and February reading, studying and playing games of Go, and making music mixes.  Julie continued her yoga, tea ceremony, ikebana and kanji classes, applied for graduate school, and began studying for the GRE.

In early February it really started to hit us that we didn’t have much time left in Japan (we’ll be returning to Portland in August).  Initially this was made us sad but we sucked it up and decided to make the most of the time we had left.  We spent more time hanging out with our friends in the community, including a couple coworkers at my school.

For the rest of February we hibernated and didn’t stray too far from our heater.  At the beginning of March we attended graduation ceremonies at our schools.  We said good bye to some awesome people, including a student I’d been tutoring every day at lunch.

As the school year came to a close a math teacher at my school approached me and asked if I’d be interesting in teaching a couple of math lessons in English.  Since I’ll be returning to teaching high school math in August, I decided to go for it.  In the advanced homeroom class we did an investigation involving a series of diagrams of toothpicks.  The students had to figure out the pattern and create an equation to determine the number of toothpicks in any given diagram.  In the regular homeroom classes we explored the experimental and theoretical probabilities of the game show “Let’s Make a Deal.”  Both lessons went very well, though the investigation was a little nerve-wracking as I was also being observed by three English teachers, two math teachers, a science teacher, the principal, vice principal, two graduating seniors, and the school nurse.

For the rest of March we prepared for the arrival of Julie’s parents and the departure of our coworkers who would be transferring to other schools.  It turns out one of our good friends, a person who works at my school, was transferred to a town pretty far away from Noheji.  It was very difficult to say good bye to this person but we know that we’ll see them again in the months to come and will continue to correspond when we get back to the U.S.

About a week and a half ago we met our new coworkers.  At Noheji High School I’ll be working with four new English teachers who are all extremely nice, interesting, and professional.  I think the last few months of teaching are going to be a lot of fun.

One last update relating to the game of Go.  I’ve been playing in monthly mini-tournaments (6 people) at the Noheji club for quite a while now and have been coming in either first or second pretty consistently over the past several months.  This past week I competed with a 7 kyu ranking and went 5-0, even legitimately beating a 6 dan opponent (13 ranks higher than me) for the first time.  It made me wonder if I was stronger than 7 kyu.  The week previously, at a Go club in Shichinohe, one of the members guessed I was around 3 kyu (4 ranks higher than I was at the tournament).  This seems a little high to me and I suspect I’m probably somewhere in the middle between the two rankings.  At any rate, I’m further along than I thought I’d be at this point but I still have some gaps that I need to fill to get to where I want to be before we leave.

If the ranking thing is mysterious to you, I’m basically a solid intermediate level player as of right now.  A 1, 2, or 3 kyu rank is advanced-intermediate.

I think that’s it.  Sorry for the lack of pictures but we’ll be sure to post a bunch in the posts to come, including:

1.  Exploring Aomori with Julie’s parents.

2.  Exploring Kyoto, Hiroshima, Miyajima, and Tokyo with Julie’s parents.

3.  Homecooked meals (including some delicious one-pot (nabe) dishes).

On our third day we traveled an hour by train to a town located in the foothills of some mountains Southeast of Nagano City.  From there we took a 15 minute car ride up a mountain and walked one a half kilometers through a forest (and up the mountain a little further) before finally reaching a hot spring full of snow monkeys.  Pictures and videos below.

This one had a toy it was protecting.

Galloping on three paws to keep it safe from a thief.

I watched him roll the ball in fresh snow to make it bigger.

At first I thought he was doing some sort of balancing trick but after a few moments it became apparent that he was marking his toy.

Videos:

More photos and videos here.

For the second year in a row Julie and I decided to spend our winter vacation exploring Japan outside the confines of Aomori Prefecture.  This year we decided to head to Nagano to see a friend, enjoy an onsen or two, and hang out with some monkeys.

We traveled by shinkansen (bullet train).

This looked like an interesting restaurant.

Guess the meat. Tuna? Beef? Horse? No. No. No. Minke whale? Yep. I guess it was inevitable that we'd eventually get around to eating whale in Japan. The worst part was that it was absolutely delicious (which made us feel even more guilty).

We stayed at ryokan (old style Japanese inn) in Nagano City. It totally reminded us of the inn in Spirited Away with its maze of stairs. If you haven't had the pleasure of watching that wonderful movie, I'll describe it another way: It was sort of like the world's most elaborate treehouse except, you know, built inside a box on the ground instead of a tree.

Relaxing at the ryokan.

On the third day it began to snow.

If you enjoyed any or all of the pictures above, please click here to see the rest of our non-monkey related Nagano photos.

I found this while looking through old photos on my cell phone.

In case you can’t read that, it says:

Primitive Notebook:

This is the most comfortable notebook you have ever run into.  You will feel like writing with it all the time.