Nasu: Home of the world's coolest phone booth (among other things)

久しぶり！Long time no see! I have lots to tell you about, as this past Monday was Marine Day, which meant a three day weekend and lots more fun!

Friday, as much as it killed me, was the last E.S.S. meeting of the semester. It wasn't exciting or one of the memorable meetings of the semester since we were just listening to the speeches of the first year students, but I literally burst into tears when Yasu said "Let's meet again in the fall!" ...to which Yuki A. and Sat-chan yelled "Yasu don't say that! You're making her cry!"

After the meeting we headed to Toppu, another Izakaya (Japanese pub) near the school for a Nomikai and dinner. Yasu announced the winners of the speech contest, the four of whom would be representing the University in a speech contest come the fall. One of them was Akihiro, a freshman who totally deserved it, and who I've been correcting/tweaking his speech for the better part of a month. Before I even knew there was a speech contest going on amongst the freshman he was coming to me with two drafts of two different speeches about global warming and the human memory/methods of memorization (did I mention that these speeches were all in English? I was completely wowed by his level of vocabulary and depth in his speeches.) so that, once I was done correcting them, he could pick the better speech. Some people came to me asking me to correct their speech last week. O_o

In Japan they don't teach public speaking (and they were amazed when I said that it was a mandatory class at Penn State and pretty much a necessary life skill in America), so this was kind of a big deal for them, and I could definately tell that most of them (upperclassmen included) had never had any experience talking in front of crowds, since I coached a couple of them on how to make their speeches interesting. I never coached Akihiro on that part, but he rocked his speech in terms of passion, power, getting and maintaining his audiences attention and he was also the only person with any sort of visual aid. Go Akihiro! (^o^)v

After Yasu and Takami gave their speeches and handed out gifts to those who helped with AKEL, Yasu let me have the floor, as I had asked him prior to the Nomikai. In between hiccups of laughter and crying I managed to get out a little speech I wrote, thanking them for being my friends and making my semester as amazing as it has been by telling them about the line "Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been" from Jimmy Buffet's Barefoot Children. It was a little tricky in Japanese, but I managed it...and then we made with the Kanpai-ing (cheers) and started the party!(sorry its sideways...that's accidentally the way I filmed it on my camera)

Since last week was Tony's birthday and we didn't get to have an E.S.S. party for the occasion, and Thursday was Takami's (Tony's tutor) birthday, we surprised them with a birthday cake and a loud round of Happy Birthday. Tony just laughed, but Takami was so embarrassed (he really doesn't do well with public attention. If I were to say that anyone could die from embarrassment...it might be him).

The rest of time I spent talking with Yasu, Tony, Yuki A. (not to be confused with Yuuki, who will also make an appearance in this entry) and Naoya, a third year student at one of the branch campuses, but who spent his freshman year at the Mito campus as an E.S.S. member. He was a complete hoot and I had a blast talking with him. He got a huge kick out of how much more open Americans are compaired to their Japanese counterparts, and at first couldn't believe some of the jokes that I made since I was a girl....all completely normal stuff in America...but considering that boys don't even like to say "Hell" or "Damn" in front of girls and sarcasm is just not something that is used in Japan, it was ground breaking for him...and quite amusing for Tony and I. I wish I had met him earlier, because he's a lot more open than most Japanese people I've encountered and I feel like he, Tony, Yasu and I could have gotten up to all kinds of fun mischief together :)

The rest of the time I ran around taking pictures with a bunch of my friends, in between Sat-chan and Naho jumping me and exclaiming that I "simply wasn't allowed to go" and that they were "keeping me", which made me feel good...and start crying again.

The next day, Yuuki came and got me and we hung out for the vast majority of the day. Last week she told me that her family and a lot of the patrons of her grandma's Ramen shop were going to a onsen (hot spring) in a town called Nasu, in Tochigi (the next state over), and asked if I wanted to go (since we would be the only people under the age of 40 on the trip). Of course I jumped at the chance to explore a new place, but since we were leaving early on Sunday morning, I spent Saturday evening at her place. On the way to her house, we stopped at a shopping mall half way between Mito and Ishioka, where her house is to catch up on girl time and take some Purikura (of course. That stuff is highly addictive).

On the way to the mall, we were listening to my ipod and the song "Gives you Hell" by All American Rejects came on and she really liked it...but just didn't understand what it meant to "Give someone hell"...the best way I could think of to phrase it in Japanese was "I will make problems for you." . Oh well, she got the point. It was really funny listening to her hum along to all of the lyrics and then just opening her mouth to belt out "Hope it gives you hell" because it was the only part of the song that she knew!

I found out later that Yuuki's two Korean friends, Huiseung and Duyeon, who are foreign exchange students at Meiji University in Tokyo were also coming with us, so we chilled in Yuuki's room doing homework and watching Glee online until we went to pick them up at the station. We had dinner at Yuuki's grandma's Ramen shop, named "Yacht", for a reason I'm not quite sure of...but it was really, really, really yummy. Yuuki found out I liked Yakisoba, so her Mom (who also works at the restaurant) made that for us, along with Gyouza, Cha-han (Stir fried rice) and Ramen. Normally I'm not a huge soup person period, and though I enjoy Ramen, I usually leave the broth just because, as I said, its just not my thing...but Yuuki's grandma's ramen broth was so good. O_O We also met some of the regular patrons who were going on the trip with us and one of them bought us yubari melon/caramel ice cream from Hokkaido that was delicious.

The next morning we woke nice and early (there was nothing nice about this) to go meet the bus at the Ramen shop and take the trip to Nasu. I'm not exactly sure how long it took to get there since we kept making an absurd amount of rest stops and had to wait for a person who over slept, but it felt like a really long drive...especially since Japanese seating space is even shorter than American ones and well...Huiseung and I are a little to tall to sleep/sit comfortably...and Japanese roads are really narrow and really windy.

The scenery was gorgeous though, and we did eventually get there! And along the way we met Hello Kitty at a rest stop and at another rest stop Yuuki and I saw a small festival procession with a Mikoshi (a small portable shrine that houses the deity of that temple) and we got our picture taken with them and got a Ofuda ( a paper with Buddhist sutras on it for good luck) four donations, so that livened up the trip.

Once we checked into the hotel, Yuuki, her grandma, mom, great-uncle (who looked like he could be her Dad by how well he aged), Huiseung, Duyeon and I went exploring through the town. It was beyond gorgeous. The trees and greenery were vibrant and alive and the town and river was so tranquil and quaint. We wandered down by the river for quite awhile, and because it was over a hundred degrees with god only knows what percent humidity we finally gave up and took off our shoes to go running through the river, which probably would have normally been freezing, but since it is the Manatsubi (any day that exceeds 30 degrees Celsius...and boy does it exceed 30 degrees here) right now, it felt so good.

After we discovered a little hot spring under the bridge that was to hot to stick our feet in, we headed across the bridge to the main part of town. In the main drag of town we just kind of wandered, walking by shops until we stopped at the little soba place. As we were walking up and down the street we kept seeing these carved bamboo shoots filled with unlit candles and eventually found out that later that night there would be a festival. It was going to be a small festival because the town itself was small, but we were all excited because we lucked out to be there the day of. Also on the street I saw about the coolest phone booth I have ever seen. It was entirely made of wood and even had a thatch roof.

I really, really can't express how beautiful this town was. I don't know what it is about the Japanese country side compared to rural PA, but...its so much brighter. Everything is so much greener...I'm going to say that its because they're an island and don't have much in the way of evergreen and hemlock, what colors most of the Pennsylvania landscape, so the trees that they do have are really bright and...so full of life, I didn't alter a single one of these pictures...but everything just pops in them, just like it does in real life.

We headed back to hotel and after playing this ridiculously fun game of Taiko no Tatsujin (where you play Taiko drums), Huiseung and I passed out until dinner time because we were so tired from the heat. At dinner our whole group had a whole tatami room to itself, with formal Japanese dinners (that I didn't really end up eating much of...ryokan food is very much an acquired taste that Yuuki told me she doesn't much care for and all the girls later ended up buying instant ramen and bread) and a Karaoke system. They didn't have songs from the last year, but it was still fun singing along with Yuuki, Duyeon and Huiseung. I especially liked Huiseung and my duet of "I can show you the world". :) Of course, none of the adults new our songs, so they ended up singing a lot of Enka, which is Japanese folk music that is very unique...it includes a lot of....warbeling...that's the best way I can describe it....you make your own judgement.

After dinner, we went back to town for the festival! Unfortunately it was raining, so some of the candles got put out, but it did eventually dry back up. The candles and bamboos were beautiful though, and especially when we got the performance area in town, it looked like something out of a movie...like a place where magic fairies might pop out at any moment or something like that...or maybe that's just the dreamer in me...either way it was really pretty.

Just as we got there, this lady came out in this elebaorate multilayered kimono and put on something called a "Kimono dance". I'm not even going to try to explain it because it will just make it sound like an archaic strip tease, but it was actually really beautiful...so just watch it. Mmkay?

And of course we finished our day with a relaxing soak in the onsen (the public baths I've talked about before. So relaxing :)...I conked out about half an hour after we got back from the baths.

Today we came back from Tochigi (sleeping most of the way through the bus trip, since we were still exhausted from yesterday...somehow?) and Yuuki dropped Duyeon and Huiseung off at the train station before taking me home to do homework (...about that...)

Oh and I found this lovely surprise in my mailbox when I got home!

Thanks Itha! :)