teamEggers

Enoshima – Spring Fest

Jon and I picked a bee you ti ful day to go down to the island of Enoshima. It also turned out to be the spring festival! I love it when that stuff works out. Although… “festival” means that our nice day on the island want jam-packed with other people.

There was a band….

…and jumpy castles. Oh my. I love jumpy castles.

Or maybe it’s just the idea of jumpy castles. Jon likes to remind me that I haven’t actually been in one for years.

Regardless, we have a lovely day wandering about, doing our best to avoid the crowds.

The street food here is so crazy!! Look at these little squiddy guys, on a stick! I’m pretty sure I like looking at them better than eating them.

There was a treasure hunt going on around the temple grounds! Jon was so sad he wasn’t an 8-year-old that could read japanese. Okay. Really the crux of the matter here was that we can’t read japanese. I think if the clues were in English, it would have been teamEggers vs. this boy scout, on the search for the big prize.

It was so cute! I wish there were treasure hunts in real life. (Do you think anyone cares that we take pictures of their little children all the time? I think that in america that might be frowned on. People of japan: I won’t steal your children! I promise!)

The tide was out, and on the back side of the island we were able to walk around the rocks. It was so beautiful.

Little kids were playing in the tidepools, and old men were trying to fish. Funny – I didn’t even notice that I was in this picture until just now. There were creepy crawlys in there! That little girl was brave!

I just love these pictures. I think they turned out really well.

We were able to take a little boat back from the island instead of walking the way we came. When I was here last year, the tide was high and it was really windy, and this wasn’t an option. I was so excited to not have to walk back up all the stairs!!

Next up, teamEggers visits the aquarium!!!

Yuzawa

There’s something really charming about the idea of a snow festival. We grew up in Wisconsin, a place where I’ve never know the people to celebrate the back-breaking winter weather. In Tokamachi, however, the perspective is different.

61 years ago, the locals decided to celebrate the mounds snow around them, instead of feeling oppressed by it. They built snow castles and drank in the streets. It was festive. Joyous. It was a way to lift spirits in the middle of a hard winter. I think I read that somewhere. If not, I might have made it up. As jon will tell you, I’m prone to doing that. Anyways, that’s the picture I want to keep of the Japanese people 61 years ago.

On Saturday morning, with little more than an idea of which train to take, we loaded ourselves onto the Shinkansen.

I packed brunch, which amounted to a bottle of sparkling wine (wrapped hobo-style) and some juice:

…and we sat back for 2 hours, as or bullet train carried us towards the mountains.

**

Remember from last year, we talked about how every little area seems to have it’s own local food specialty? The big one here is rice, but the omnipresent street food is a something packaged brightly in leaves.

Isn’t it beautiful? It looks like it could be a tropical fish, with all of it’s tails and tendrils.

Oh. It’s… green. Okay. And to think I had just sworn off macha for good this time (the thick green tea drink). But okay. We’ll go with it. I wonder what’s inside!

Oh. (sad face) it’s bean paste. in retrospect, why on earth would I have expected the bundle to be filled with anything but bean paste? Foiled again.

Perhaps 4 photos of that was gratuitous, but i wanted you to experience the excitement (and subsequent disappointment) with me.

**

At this point, we’re wandering around the town of Yuzawa, which is akin to a neighborhood ski town. Not ritzy like Vail, or quaint and charming like Breckenridge. Yuzawa felt like the working-man’s ski town. There were onsens (hot baths) abound, and lots of houses. Very neighborhoody-like.

Despite all these [theoretical] housing opportunities around us, Jon and I came to Yuzawa without a hotel booked. I think I’ll leave you there, since the telling of that story could be quite long.

Instead, I’ll leave you with this totally awesome picture of the area that we were in. Mountains are so pretty. (Although I find it’s best to look at pictures of them rather than to climb around in them!)

“it loves you”

Jon reminded me today that I shouldn’t abandon the blog to work on other things. He says “it loves you. It just wants some love back.”
This is another reason I would not be a good Mommy. I forget about things.

Today I saw a child screaming… screaming, running after a woman and a stroller. The “mom”-woman was gaining distance and the little girls screams started sounding less and less like “fun game” and more like “mommy come back”. I wondered… was that woman running away from her child? Literally? Was she trying to abandon the girl in the middle of the park? And more importantly, did I fault her?

Anyways. I love you, teamEggers. I love that you’re dependable and don’t ask too much from me. My mom called me yesterday, as I was in the middle of what must have sounded like a quarter-life-crisis. Despite our glorious surroundings, which I keep forgetting to enjoy, I seem to be having a small mental breakdown over the past few weeks. I think things are on the upswing, and I resolve that March will be better.

So for you today, I bring a very happy tale of one girl who gets to stay in Japan.

Yesterday afternoon, I jumped on a train into the unexplored Burroughs of Yokohama.

• Final destination: The Japanese Immigration office.
• The task: An attempt to extend my 90-day tourist visa, so that I don’t have to leave the country in April.

After standing in various lines in a room that was set up similar to the DMV, lots of back and forth with a man named Ki-no-shi-ta, and the most charmingest smile I could muster, I was awarded a visa extension!

(I just had to buy a 40$ revenue stamp before they let me have it. Good thing I had some cash in my pocket!) Really though, $40 is a gift, considering that leaving the country to go to Hong Kong would have probably cost us close to $1500.

Happy, happy.

Yuzawa + Tokamachi = Yokamachi?

Here we go!  Flying by the seat of our pants.  Embracing laziness in planning spontaneity!

Jon and I are taking the bullet train up to the central western side of Japan (Niigata prefecture) to check out the Japan’s #2 snow festival in Tokamachi.

Will we find a place to stay?  Will we have to sleep in the train station and bathe like hobos!? Tune in next time and find out!

An Evening in Shimokitazawa

Hello again! When we left off yesterday, I was about to tell you about our organic, hippy-lunch in Shimokitazawa.

Under ordinary circumstances (read: when in Seattle), I like to know where my food comes from. I like to be able to make educated choices about how I vote with my dollars. Living in a different culture, you kind of forgo those sorts of ideals and values, in favour of experiencing whatever that area has to offer. 99% of the time this is nothing short of spectacular, but there is that part of me that still wants to choose things that are environmentally and socially sustainable. Enter lunch.

Our lunch spot today has us seated on the ground, dining from mismatched plates, in what really appears to be the back porch of someone’s house. Neat, huh?

This “sitting on the floor” thing is a reoccuring theme this year. I’m used to curling up in balls while I sit, but Jon looks significantly more uncomfortable with the whole thing. Luckily, he’s a good sport about me flashing a camera in his face every three minutes.

Lunch today consisted of a menagerie of tasty, mostly-vegetarian things:

And if lunch wasn’t creepy enough for you, sportsfans, you can always see what the local chefs are up to a this place. Oh, how I love the Japanese interpretation of our language.

Wandering through the streets. Fabulous.

We eventually stumbled into a “science store”. What do you suppose happens with “Science Snow”?

One of my favourite things when I was little was space food. For some reason, it makes me think of my dad. I’d always beg for the ice cream sandwich flavours. What do Japanese tikes beg for? Perennial favourites like Tako Yaki (those weird octopus-street-food-things-that-make-me-want-to-hurl), Daigaku Imo (sugar-glazed sweet potatoes tossed with sesame seeds), and Annin Dofu (almond tofu).

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Eventually we met up with our friends [Brian] Reece and (his girlfriend) Emi. As the boys were texting and exchanging voice mails trying to locate each other (keep in mind, this is one of the busiest cities in the world), Emi and I literally ran into each other in a hat shop. It was so “small world”. Thinking about it still blows my mind.

This is Emi & Reece:

The 5 of us headed over to one of Emi’s favourite bars, The Free Factory, where we snagged a little cubby-hole of a table.

We ordered this thing called “Mexican Chips”. It was absolutely the oddest part of the night. Queso Dorritos covered in ketchup, mayo, beans, and raw onions. We ate them with chopsticks, of course.

I’m going to go ahead and maintain that these mexican chips were the weirdest part of the day, even considering that I purchased a pair of earmuffs with pandas on them. Check these out. Absolutely Kowaii.

Here’s a random thought to leave on. What, exactly, is happening on this sign?