Takebe International Villa ...

Way back in December my friends and I decided to spend the weekend at one of the International Villas in the Okayama prefecture (a prefecture is kind of like a county back home). In our prefecture we have 5 different International Villas that were built by the city to attract international tourists. They are kind of hostels in that you rent by the room in a huge house & share communal spaces like the kitchen, laundry room, and TV room. We decided to opt for a low key weekend of R&R so we booked the Takebe International Villa for a Saturday night.

I was pretty excited at the thought of relaxing all weekend.

The villa had two buildings and an onsen. We rented the building on the left.

The inside was nice & we learned that we would be the only people in our house for the night.

The inside of the villa looked like so:

Each bedroom had it's own bathroom, if that's what you want to call it.

This is a picture of the how the bathroom converted from just a sink

to the toilet and a shower. You had to pull the sink out from the wall to

expose the toilet, which was kind of strange. And if you looked up there was a

shower head, although none of us were brave enough to try it.

And the view from the villa looked like so:

I felt like we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was quite, the scenery was great, the weather was good. It was kind of like camping back home, minus the tent. We all pitched in to cook dinner, we exchanged Christmas presents (yes, that is how long ago this was), and then went onsening.

The onsen from the outside. If you remember exactly

what an onsen is then, obviously you know I

can't take pictures of the inside.

But there were lots of signs & rules posted.

No co-ed onsening in Takebe.

We survived our first relaxing weekend at the villa. One down, four to go.

xoxo

Happy New Year ...

Tomiyama (one of the schools Amanda and I work for) had a dinner for the staff to ring in the New Year. Amanda & I were excited because our reservations were at a yakiniku restaurant, more commonly known as Japanese BBQ or Korean BBQ. This type of restaurant is a 'cook it yourself at the table' kind of a place. You are served raw meat and you grill it yourself at your table. The meat is typically beef, chicken and pork but you have to be careful. When in doubt, ask what you're eating before you eat.

Some of the teachers, myself & Naoko (in the red).

Naoko is the principal of Tomiyama.

These teachers are a riot.

Amanda and I have so much fun joking around with them.

We kind of want to bring them back to America with us.

Amanda was trying to figure out what exactly everything was.

We ate tongue once, so we were trying to steer clear of that.

It was kind of hard to keep everything straight.
& Then they brought out this plate... Naoko said Amanda & I wouldn't like it and that 'many foreign people are unable to eat this meat'. I didn't ask questions but after looking at it I decided there was absolutely no way I was going to try it.
Eventually curiosity got the best of me and I inquired. Naoko told me that it was 'tetchan', otherwise known as intestine. Glad I didn't try it.

Doesn't it look like intestine if you look at it long enough? Sickening.

So Happy New Year to everyone, despite the fact that it is now mid-March. If you ever come visit, Amanda & I know a great yakiniku joint right down the street from our apartment. & If you're adventurous enough, you can try the tetchan.

much love

tara

xoxo

Celebrating Aussie Day ...

I must say that it is true, I didn't know the slightest thing about Australia before coming to Japan. Sure everyone is interested in going to Australia, some make attempts to imitate the distinct accent, and most everyone believes in the stereotype of kangaroos and koalas. My fabulous Australian friends have expanded my knowledge immensely and I am slowly, but surely, becoming 'one of the Aussies'.
On January 26th we celebrated Aussie Day with a group of gaijins (foreigners) by doing all things that were Australian. I had absolutely no idea that Cricket was the most popular sport in Australia and I sure as hell didn't know how to play, but a group of us got together to try it out.

Our equipment ... including some Kirin & some Chu-Hi.

That was essential for our warmth. Just our luck, it was freezing out.

Out of all of these people, maybe 3 actually understood the game.

But we learned quickly.

"No Tara, it is not possible

'steal home' in cricket." Who knew?

The whole batting thing was kind of strange.

Was this baseball? Or golf?

Amanda, Meghan & I ... playing defense.

The game ended when Ian & I were the last two people batting

& between the two of us we managed to score enough points

to tie the game & create a controversial victory.
(Our team says we won, the other team says it was a draw.)

In the end, we're all still friends.

Although a trophy for the winning team would have been nice,

considering that it was MY team. I'll have to get TC working on that one. :)

After a successful game of cricket, we headed to the appropriate local watering hole, Aussie Bar. This bar reminds me of Suds from back home, minus Beau & Luke. It was absolutely essential for us to wear the proper attire, so our friend Amy brought along this wonderful Australian original. This hat was outrageous. Apparently people really, truly wear them in Australia. When you encounter a swarm of flies, you are supposed to shake your head back and forth & the corks will clear you a path. Gross, huh?

I look like a serious idiot.

Apparently meat pies are a hot commodity in Australia. Aussie Bar special orders Villi's Meat Pies for the occasion and everyone, well the Australians anyway, get really about it. I had never had a meat pie, nor a burning desire to try one, but if there were ever a day to try one, this was it.

Amy swore that the more ketchup you put on it, the better.

Aussie Day was great fun. Although I won't be eating meat pies anytime soon (especially after seeing Sweeny Todd), I do feel cultured. Which is a wonderful thing, especially considering I will be visiting Australia in 5 short months! Hopefully I'll fit right in. :)

much love

-tara-

xoxo

Bowling ...

A group of teachers invited Amanda and I to go bowling with them on a Saturday night. We all met for dinner and then headed to Sonic Bowl, yes the same sonic as in Sonic the Hedgehog. I was pretty excited, I'm not going to lie. This was my first time bowling in Japan and the word on the street was that the teachers weren't very good. When I told them that I could bowl in the triple digits, they looked amazed. When I told them that Matt could bowl around 200 they about went in to shock. One of my teachers admitted that she hardly ever bowls over a 50!! I considered making wagers on the game right then & there.

The bowling alley was just like the bowling alleys back home, only cleaner & less smokey. Also, noticeably missing was a beverage stand of some kind. Maybe it was bring your own? I can't say that I've ever heard of a dry bowling alley before.

Our first line of business was to get shoes. The method was pretty efficient. It was the typical Japanese vending machine style. You put in your 300 yen (roughly $3.00), choose your size, push the button & voila. You have shoes. My only problem was that my shoes were too big! I'm sure that I could have requested a different size, but sometimes it's just easier to suck it up. So I'll blame my poor scores on the fact that my shoes were too big. :)

The shoes were your standard bowling shoes,

except these bad boys were velcro only.

The competition was on.

Junko kept score and refused to alter mine after I tried

to convince her that my gutter was really meant to be a strike.

All smiles, despite her score. :)

Yuka was embarrassed by the fact that she literally threw 8 gutters in a row.
My teammates Tomoko & Yuka.

The night was a success. I love spending time with the teachers outside school, not to mention I took the #1 slot on our team, despite the fact that my score was below average. It's actually kind of embarrassing, so I won't post the actual number. I will say that I was over 100, yet under 130. My bowling crew from back home knows that I can put up bigger numbers than that. It seriously must have been the shoes. :)

much love,
-tara-
xoxo

Miyajima Island ...

After we had exhausted all of our emotional energy at the Peace Park, we decided to finish the day by visiting one of the three most beautiful places in Japan - Miyajima. I had been once before but Amanda had not so I step up and pretend that I know how to get us where we are trying to go. Sometimes I amaze myself.

We walked out of the Park and ended up right in front of the Hiroshima Baseball Stadium, where the Hiroshima Toyo Carp (広島東洋カープ) play (yes, that's the name of their team). We didn't get tickets to the game, but I have put that down on my list of things to do. I love watching baseball & going to Cubs games back home so I think it would be fun to check out a Japanese style baseball game. If only I could get Ali here & we could go together :)


Next to the stadium was the street car platform. 99.5% of it was in Japanese but I figured since we were going to an island, we should head towards the water, right? We got on what we thought was maybe, possibly the right street car and Amanda started praying while I crossed my fingers.

We rode on the street car FOREVER! For your information ... If you are ever trying to get from the Peace Park to the port for Miyajima, never, I repeat NEVER, take a street car. We honestly rode for what had to have been 34 stops. It took us close to 45 minutes to travel probably less than 15 miles. That's a serious guesstimate. The highlight of the trip was when an older woman (like great grandma older) was getting off of the street car & very politely stopped to tell us (very slowly) to "Have a good day", in perfect English. She was so cute. I still remember what she looked like. :)

But finally, and still smiling, we arrived at the port and bought tickets for the ferry that would take us to Miyajima.

I thought there was a good possibility I was going to freeze to death on the way over.

It was so windy & so cold.

But we were still smiling. :)

There are monkeys in those trees. I experienced them firsthand the last time.

Not a fan.

Thanks to a little zoom action we were able to see the Torii from the ferry.

So I was prepared for what we would see upon exiting the ferry, but Amanda was not. She had no idea that we would step out into a herd of deer who wanted nothing more than to snatch your Coke or eat your map.

I'm not going to lie, they kind of creep me out.

They're just not suppose to come this close.

Amanda was all about it. She was loving the deer,

the deer were loving her.

Not so much my story. This deer clearly did not like me.

But no worries, the feeling was mutual.

We were sure that these things had to be something sweet like a donut or something, not to mention the line was long so it had to be something good, right?

Wishful thinking on our part ... We got to the front of the line & the lady asked us (in Japanese) which one we wanted, as there were 4 options. I couldn't recognize two of the choices, but I very clearly understood 'taco' (octopus) or 'ebi' (shrimp). Wow, so much for something sweet.

We both got shrimp and they were definitely interesting. It tasted like someone sent a handful of shrimp through a compactor (tails & all), cut it with a cookie cutter, and fried it for less than a minute. Kind of mushy, kind of crunchy (thanks to the tails and the other various shrimp parts), and kind of oily. Sounds good right? Come visit, you can try it out for yourself.

We made our way closer to the Itsukushima Shrine where the 'Floating Torii' stands. It's called the Floating Torii because it appears to do just that, float, at high tide. At low tide it is surrounded by mud and sand and can be reached by walking through the muck.

Of course we did.

Since there were still deer roaming everywhere, I decided to try my luck again with befriending one. I was successful. But I think it has something to do with the fact that we had Quaker Oats granola bars.

He just seemed so hungry & he was kind of homely.

We did some shopping all around the island and the caught the ferry back to the mainland, completely exhausted ... but still smiling.

The sun was starting to set and it was really beautiful,

despite the fact that it was (still) freezing.

I have NO idea how I got this many bags.

How am I going to fit them all on my bike? Seriously.

We considered staying at a hostel or finding a capsule, but ultimately decided to head back to Okayama on the JR (local) train. It had been a long day and our beds were sounding really nice. We definitely had to take a taxi to our apartment though, considering the amount of baggage we brought back.

much love,

-tara-

xoxo