A Heaping Serving

For your latest installment of life in riceland, I will be telling you about Japanese grocery stores, the biggest fireworks festival in all of Japan (and maybe the world), Japanese words for car parts, and food "challenge."

I have been incredibly busy since last I wrote, but I`ve been trying to get all these pics posted from the Oshima-mura Natsu Matsuri (which is this town`s summer festival), the Nagaoka Hanabi Matsuri (which is the fireworks festival there), photos of artwork from the Continue Art Project which I will talk a bit more about later, and other various wierdness, not to mention cute girls in yukatas!

On Tuesday I went to Nagaoka with Yoshida-sensei, who lives there (though he has an apartment here too, because it is an hours drive there). I got to meet his family.... his wife, and two daughters, Mio and Lisa who are very nice and know some English. We went to the Hyaku En Shop, which is like a super dollar store here, and I got all kinds of cool little stuff like Hello Kitty chopstick case, a Snoopy washcloth, some blue hangers for the futon closet (a bit different than normal hangers), some Moringas caramels (oishii!), and a scrub brush for the bathroom (gotta take care of the apato). Oh yeah, got one of those little hfurin (glass windchimes) that says "kori" in kanji which means ice....corny maybe, but hey as hot as it is, ice would be nice.

Then we went to the grocery store in Nagaoka. They have all the normal stuff, you know, squid, octopus, fish, rice, tofu, vegies, and bread. We got seafood pizza and asahi biru and lemon juice drink and some meat kabobs and everything to eat at the fireworks festival picnic. The first thing you notice in Japanese grocery stores is the staff walking around calling "Irasshaimasu" which is a greeting to customers, but seems a bit distracting, though I guess really friendly. Also the yogurt section had a little Tv on it to advertise the yogurt, that was kinda cool. And at the checkout, if you buy the bakery foods, they give you chopsticks.

The fireworks in Nagaoka are world renowned and well worth their reputation. Some of them were synchronized with music over a loud speaker like a fireworks ballet. It was really amazing. Also, while we were sitting around munching on food, waiting for the sun to go down, while I did yukata spotting and photographing, I heard someone right in front of us speaking English. Sweet! So I ask the guy where he`s from and all that, and he`s a Niigata prefecture JET as well on his 3rd year from Canada. He had several friends there as well who spoke English, so that was a pretty cool chance meeting. I mean, out of the tens of thousands of people there, I met another JET there.

I stayed over with the Yoshida`s that night, and they were very generous hosts. That morning I had a real Japanese breakfast with rice and miso soup and salmon and omelet and peaches! I also got to see a Japanese morning show where they interviewed Avril Lavigne and she sang some. She looked kind of unhappy to be up so early with everyone else on the show so perky and happy. Apparently, she`s pretty popular in Japan.

The most popular boy band in Japan is a pop band called SMAP. Mio showed me a photo book of the band. I think Goro is the best looking one. If your interested, try a Google search of SMAP, I`m sure there`s probably at least a hundred fan pages.

On the way back I discussed what things were called in Enlish and in Japanese in the car. Like the blinker is called the winker. The brake light is the stop lamp, the steering wheel is the handle, and the door handle, well it just doesn`t have a name!

When we got back I went to the Continue Art Project center and drew some portraits of people and had my portrait painted. It was really kind of cool to be the subject for a change. Later that night I painted the watercolor painting on this page. The art students from tokyo seem really cool and alot like my friends from Winthrop.

Well that`s it for now, as it`s time for another cook out, this time at the Jr. High school to celebrate a sports team. Matta-ne.