Blossoms

Without argument, one of the most well-known pieces of Japan is the beautiful cherry blossoms that cover the country come spring. They may bloom in other countries too, but cherry blossoms will always remind me of our time in Japan.

It's bittersweet to see them blooming now. For someone who's never been into trees or flowers, these little suckers have come to mean a lot to me. After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011, the beginning of spring and the new life these blossoms signified hit me hard. The cyclical nature of well, nature, and the way the Japanese dug right into rebuilding and restarting got wrapped up in the blooming and falling of these little blossoms.

Because they bloom once, and for so quick a time, the blossoms can't help but be associated with the passing of time. They flourish for a week in the end of April or early May, then are overtaken by sprouting green leaves. Since our time has been limited in this country, that passage of time resonated a lot with me.

This is my last year in Japan. It's likely we'll never come back to Misawa or Japan at all. Leaving Lemoore didn't hold this bittersweet transition for me. I didn't ever feel like Lemoore was home. Misawa may be far from friends and family, but we still fell in love with the country, the culture, and everything about Japan. We missed our true home, but made a happy home here.

Seeing the blossoms bloom and knowing my time is ticking just makes me think back to all our experiences in Japan, which is what got me started blogging one yesterday.

Here are my older posts with cherry blossoms - just because they are so damn beautiful.
2011 - With a Cherry on Top
I don't have any pictures from 2012, dang!
2013 - Walk Around Town
2013 - Hirosaki Castle Cherry Blossom Festival

And this one is my favorite picture of the bunch.

Sumo Wrestling

Don't judge, but we took this trip in September 2012 and I'm just now getting around to blogging it. I'm terrible with this habitual blogging thing. But I've been thinking about our travels in Japan a lot as our time winds down, so I wanted to write down the memories before they fade.

As I said, this was in 2012. We signed up for a trip through base that included transportation and hotel and transportation to the sumo tournament, so details were minimal. It was our first trip to Tokyo and we were so excited to get to the big city. I'll have to share the rest of our trip next. 

The sumo tournament was the main event. Wikipedia has a pretty good description of the basics of sumo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumo 

The arena is round, with the mat in the middle of the stadium. The closest seats were mats on the floor, but our seats were regular stadium seats. There were headphones with English translations available, but we decided to just enjoy the visual. We figured it wouldn't be too hard to guess the winners of each match. 

Each tournament lasts for several days. We just went to one day in the middle of the tournament. Our tour guide excitedly told us which wrestlers were doing well, but those kind of details fly right over my head even in American sports. The postered wrestler on the left is a yokozuna or "grand champion". He has the white belt to signify his status. There are generally only one or two yokozuna active in wrestling at a time, and it's a highly regarded status.

Jeff's favorite fact that the tour guide shared was about pay. Only the top performing wrestlers are paid. I think it was something like the top 10%. If you fall below that rank, or never reach that rank, you are not paid for the tournaments. Their salaries are much more modest than similar athletes in America. I don't trust Wikipedia for exact figures, but the link above says the yokozuna's salary in 2006 was only about $36,000.

The crowd grows as the day goes on. We got there early because we were so curious. These early wrestlers were relatively unimportant, so the audience was scarce. By the time we got to the last round of wrestlers, the place was packed. Our tour guide said most serious sumo fans only show up for the last few rounds because those are the only ones that really matter.

The rituals before beginning a match were so interesting. And lengthy. If needed, someone would smooth the clay of the ring. The judge would sprinkle salt on the ring. The wrestlers would stretch their legs on the outskirts of the ring, then do this seated pose at their corners. 

The would move to the middle to repeat the leg stretches. Some of these hefty males could get their feet higher than I thought possible.

They would then take this pose until the judge signaled that the match could begin. The object of the match is fairly simple - knock our opponent out of the ring or onto the floor. I'm sure there are more rules to this, but we didn't get into the details. 

Something else I found interesting - the judges are ranked just like the wrestlers. Note this judge's outfit in comparison to the one above. Only the most prestigious judges mediate the top wrestlers' matches.

The matches were pretty entertaining. Some of the wrestlers would (painfully, I'm sure) try to lift or throw their opponent by grabbing the belt he wore. Some of the smaller wrestlers would try to dodge or duck and throw their opponents off balance. Jeff and I enjoyed guessing how long the match would take and who would win. Some matches would end in seconds, some would take a minute or two. It's a quick sport.

Each division of wrestlers began with a little procession. It sounded like the announcer named each wrestlers as he entered the ring. They did a little ritual hand clap or something and then exited to wait for their individual matches. 

(Sidenote - can you spot the white wrestler?)

The more prestigious wrestlers had flags - maybe signifying their wins or titles. These were all the flags of either the yokozuna or his opponent, I'm not sure. 

The rituals grew longer as the ranks grew higher. I believe this is the yokozuna, and there was obviously some special ritual to complete here. We might have learned if we had taken the translated headphones, but we enjoyed the matches nonetheless.

We both really enjoyed seeing this sport in person. While it's not something I'd turn on the TV to watch or keep track of the rankings, it is a quick paced and entertaining sport. If tournaments were closer to Misawa, we might have returned for more. I'm glad it was one of the trips we took while we were here. Sumo wrestling is still a huge aspect of Japanese culture and it's entangled in the history of Japan. It's a different experience entirely to see it happening in person. Japanese also play baseball and soccer, but it was fun to see a sport so different from American sports.

Transitions

I work with toddlers right now. One of the most stressful times of the day: transitions. Toddlers don't like change, don't like having to stop what they're doing to go do something else. It's chaotic and stressful and a simple activity like cleaning up to go play outside can cause meltdowns and panic.

Adults really aren't that different. We don't like change either. We may not throw ourselves down on the floor in a screaming fit, but the chaos of a big change in life can throw us for a loop too.

The transition from military to civilian life is something we've been planning for, waiting for, and looking forward to for years. Somehow, it changed from waiting forever for this time to come to holy cow, it's almost here.

My time in Misawa is winding down. I'm quitting my job next week, so I have some time to do things like frantically pack our things and have wisdom teeth removed (guess which one sounds more fun to me!). I'm mailing clothes home to my parents. I'm slowly preparing for the travel back, the details, the JOB, the apartment, you know - the details. It's exciting and scary and everything in between. The amount of choices we have without military orders astounds me, but it also makes narrowing things down hard. We can live in ANY city we want! We can pick ANY apartment we like! We can pick ANY jobs we can find! But we're leaving the safety net of a steady income and all the benefits. I don't yet feel like throwing myself on the ground in a fit of screaming, but I'll keep you updated ;)

I've lived in Misawa longer than any city since I've left home. It's been a string of two year living locations, but we've passed three years in Japan and we're still here. We moved here in January 2011. I was twenty-three. I could write a book on everything that's happened while I've lived here. From national disasters to personal triumphs, it's been a surprising couple of years.

While I can't wait to get back to the states and everything that entails, saying goodbye to this Japanese life will be hard.

What's Cooking

There are a lot of things I love about living in Japan. One of them is food. Amazing, fresh, delicious food. Some of it I never would have tried before moving here. Some of it I didn't know I loved until it was cooked correctly. Some of it we've learned to cook at home so we can always get our Japanese food fix in America.

Anyways, how about some food?! I'm trying to find pictures of the food itself, but I have a wonderful habit of taking pictures of my husband eating food so you might get some of those. I could make an entire album called "Jeff Eats".

One of my favorite Japanese foods is sushi! I tried sushi once before we moved here. Now we go at least once a month. We have a great cheap sushi place in town where we can fill our stomachs for less than $20. My favorites are salmon and tuna with green onions, pictured above.

 

Ramen! Every college kid has lived off those cheap packages for a semester or two, so I didn't see the big deal when we first moved here. Oh my, was I wrong. The real stuff is amazing and I could eat it every day and be happy. Every variation I've tried is delicious, soy, salt, or miso. Speaking of, I'm thinking ramen for dinner tomorrow!

The Japanese often take foods popular in other countries and put their own spin on it. There's a restaurant in town where you can order spaghetti with just about every topping (not pictured because Italian is one food I can cook better than the Japanese...). Turns out, hamburgers can be improved too. This one has a special sauce, almost like marinara. Loaded with sauce and onions, it's amazing. Jeff was obsessed with Mos Burger down south when he was on deployment and it took us no time to find one up here. The fries are amazingly fresh and crispy too.

Yakisoba is probably a familiar food to those of you who didn't live on bread and potatoes for twenty plus years. I, on the other hand, had no prior knowledge of this quick noodle stir fry. I love it, and Jeff has learned to cook it at home so we can have it without going out in the snow and trying to find parking near this impossibly small restaurant.

Gyoza is one of Jeff's favorites and I've seen it at just about every restaurant. Pictured in the back is this delicious little thing called a cheeseroll. It's cheese wrapped in wonton wrappers and fried, but it tastes different than a mozzarella cheese stick. It's on my to-do list to learn to replicate this amazing appetizer because I regularly get cravings for these as well.

Funny story. Before we moved to Japan, I didn't like rice.Then we went to this fast food restaurant full of rice bowls. A bowl of rice topped with some simple beef or pork. That's it?

Yes, that's all you need. Turns out all those years of instant white rice was a terrible example of how great rice can taste. I've since learned to cook rice in a rice cooker and could eat it every day. There's nothing like a steaming bowl of hot, sticky rice.

There's a theme to the food here. Rice, quickly cooked meat or raw meat, and vegetables. Healthy and simple. This is pepper lunch. A cast iron skillet full of beef, rice, corn, and loads of black pepper. A combination I never would have tried but seriously love.

One of the things I love and hate about Japan is the do it yourself mentality to food. A lot of restaurants come with a grill pan in the table and raw meat on the table. While it can be fun to grill your own food, sometimes it's nice to just sit and have a cooked meal without the work. Jeff always jokes that he pays to eat, not cook. Most places I've seen offer salads and appetizers and platters or bowls of raw strips of meat. Chicken, beef, lamb, pork, fish, etc. It's delicious, but you may need to know how to grill to get the meat you want.





So there's a quick little run down of some of the eats you'll find here in northern Japan. Although I'm far from the bread and butter girl I was, I still fall on the picky side of the eating scale so you won't find any octopus suction cups or fish eggs on my plate. But living here has given me an appreciation for seafood and the simple equation of rice+vegetable+small strips of meat.  And a bowl full of steaming white rice is an instant comfort food on a cold, snowy day.