Tokyo, Hanami, and other exploits

Cherry blossoms in Chuo and Peace parks

The Memorial in Peace Park. The atomic bomb dome is in the background.

Views of Maebashi from the 31st or 32nd floor of the Prefectural Building.

The famous Shibuya crossing at 5 in the morning. Before the light changes....

After the light changes. So many people so early in the morning!

What have I been up to? Well, let's see. Two weekends ago I took a trip to the Tokyo area to visit some friends. I met Gillian in Tokyo on Saturday night and we wandered around the streets until the trains started again in the morning. We went to her little town of Kumagaya and when I say little I really do mean little. Not a lot going on there but we did eat sushi at this restaurant that delivers whatever you order on a mini Shinkansen train and that was pretty awesome. Then we met Steven and Don in Maebashi and went to the Prefectural building which was the fast way to see the city. And then I came home :)
Last weekend I was supposed to go to a Hanami party. The word Hanami has something to do with cherry blossom viewing but I don't know if it's a verb or a noun or how to properly use it but I do know that people say Hanami parties so that's the only context I'm brave enough to use it in. Anyway, although Mariko and I found the park where the party was we couldn't find the actual party. So we left the park and ate dim sum and Tim (my co-teacher) joined us and then we went back to the park and just sat around with everyone else looking at the cherry blossoms. And we enjoyed a few chu-his as well.
From across the river we heard singing and at first Tim and I thought we imagined it but Mariko informed us that it was a sweet potato vendor using his song to lure customers. I pictured a man walking around singing with a sack of sweet potatoes on his back, kind of like a bizarre, Japanese Santa Claus. However, when he came around to our side of the river we saw that he was actually driving a little van and his song was a recording. We were disappointed but Tim bought a potato anyway and I took a picture of the van and recorded his song. It was still a pretty cool song.
This weekend I went with Tim and James (Tim's co-teacher at his other school) to a video game bar. It was pretty amazing. We played the original Nintendo Transformers game. What the game actually had to do with Transformers I'll never know. Those old games were really hard! So after failing to beat level 1 we turned in our Nintendo for N64 and Mario Party. It was a good time. And it's awesome that there are actually bars where you can drink and play video games.
I took a cab home and my cab driver was the first English speaking one I've encounter in Hiroshima. He asked where I was from and I old him, "California." He asked if I knew the Eagles. At first I thought he meant the football team and wondered what the Eagles had to do with me and California until he started singing, "Hotel California." So I joined him and we ended up singing quite a lot on our little drive. We sang the Rolling Stones, Orleans, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. He was pretty good. Later when he dropped me off he told me to scream for help if anyone attacked me. It was a strange way to say good bye but I said I would if anything happened. Fortunately, I made it safely back to my apartment without being accosted.
Work has taken some getting used to. I feel like I'm finally starting to get to know my students and like maybe they're starting to warm up to me. I did have one 2 and a half year old who was hysterical because he couldn't take the class with his mom but his sobs turned to sniffles by the end of the class and I gave him a sticker and he seemed alright. My students have started calling me Jessica "Green Pepper" because apparently the way my last name is spelled in katakana looks like the how the Japanese word for green pepper is spelled. So I am now Jessica Peace Green Pepper.
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And I've only been here for two months.