a year ago, aya and i officially started dating. i met her mother at a cafe, and we asked if we could hang out at my house. my japanese was crap, so i basically sat there, trying to pick up on a word here and there. in the end, her mom said it was ok, and from then on, we had a place to relax without spending money.
we spent several months apart while i worked in chicago and worked on getting a visa to come back, but we stuck it out. i caught a lucky break and got to come back for three weeks in november, and aya even came to chicago for a few weeks over the christmas and new years holidays. it was like releasing pressure from a valve, and every day apart was difficult. now we hang out all the time, and i’m happier every day i see her.
aunt jean gave me my grandma’s wedding ring on thanksgiving, and there were several times during aya’s christmas visit where i felt i could pop the question. i held off, though, because even though i had gotten hired in japan, i thought i should wait till i’m actually there again. and even since coming here in march, there have been many instances where i felt i should just ask. but i had a plan.
a few days ago, i called up happo-en and made a reservation for a tour, tea ceremony, and lunch. the tour would be of the lovely japanese garden they have, and the lunch would be on a terrace that overlooked those gardens. the tea ceremony would take place inside the gardens, and after lunch, we could walk around on our own. i didn’t keep those plans a secret from aya, and she was excited to go back there since we first went in november.
last night, we went out with tomo and some of the people we met at the hostel’s hanami party to an izakaya with super cheap beer. i was definitely tipsy, but not too drunk to forget talking about dressing up for today with aya. oddly enough, she assumed i had forgotten, and didn’t dress up herself. so we show up at this really fancy place, me in a shirt and tie, aya in tennis shoes and a t-shirt. needless to say, aya regretted her outfit…but it didn’t really matter because she always looks amazing.
the tour was nice, but the guide’s english was really bad. she was unable to answer any of my questions, even if they were about things she had just read from her script. aya even told me that the guide messed a few things up in japanese too, so i don’t know what that’s all about. the tea ceremony, though, was a first for me, and the lady doing it was a pro. she made no sound while preparing the tea, and the sweets we ate were great.
lunch was also delicious. i had chicken in a curry sauce, and i even choked down my steamed veggies. aya had fish in an oyster sauce, but she agreed that my choice was better. the best part was maybe the dessert; we got a dollop of some really sweet ice cream, and a slice of what i want to say was a raspberry mouse cake thing. i would have licked my plate clean if i wasn’t planning to sweep aya off her feet shortly after…
after lunch, we took a short walk in the gardens, and we stopped to sit for a while in a little hut that overlooked the main pond. aya was talking about how many koi there were, and i took that opportunity to pull the ring out of my pocket. i told her i loved her, and then presented the ring, asking her to marry me. her first words were ‘now?!?’ but then she said ‘of course!’, and the rest is history.
actually, ‘the rest’ involved a lot more because it was only about 3:30. we spent the rest of the day walking around town, and we happened upon an interesting building that was having an open house. we went in and told the guy that we were recently engaged and looking for a new place. we looked at maybe six of the units, and all had cool, unique designs. i’ve never been in a place like this, especially not in the usually-cramped buildings of tokyo. we returned to the makeshift office, and made up something about having an appointment we needed to get to. i’d love to live in one of the units, but i don’t have the $300M the smallest unit cost!
our last exciting bit of the day was the cafe we went to in naka-meguro. it was along a river walk, and next to a nice place we went to last year. what made it so special was the amount of cherry blossoms that were somehow still attached to the trees. the petals have all fallen off most cherry trees in tokyo about three weeks ago, so this was a rare sight. suddenly, the wind picked up, and the petals started falling around us like snow. it was a scene right out of a movie, and the icing on the cake.
happy birthday aya!
i guess i angered the maybe-non-existent gods last time i had a hanami party because today’s party in asakusa got rained out. it started out ok, but then it was sprinkling, then raining, then pouring. we retreated to the hostel, and continued the party indoors.
i met a bunch of new people, but only a few that i care to become friends with. it’s kinda weird being back at the hostel because it doesn’t feel so much like japan when everyone around you is a foreigner. luckily, aya, tomo, and naoto were there to japanese it up. i even played naoto in street fighter 4 on the iphone! i definitely need to put in some practice before i challenge anyone else.
after a couple sizable earthquakes, the party moved to the samurai cafe, my ‘plan b’ bar in asakusa, and we had a nice time drinking until it was time to catch the last train.
it sucks having to submit my schedule a month in advance at my job, but i got lucky and picked the best day to not work. kawaguchi was perfectly sunny today, and the cherry blossoms are pretty much in full bloom. aya and i had a little picnic in the park next to the station, and i got good and drunk in the sun.
yesterday was cloudy, and tomorrow’s forecast calls for rain. if there are gods, they were definitely pulling for me today.
and the list of new favorite places to eat grows again! tonight, i met up with aya, tomoe, and tsuyoshi in shinjuku, and we went to an izakaya called yama-chan. two major points make the case for becoming a regular: gingakougen beer, and delicious chicken wings.
the chopstick packaging tells you the proper way to eat the wings, and it’s completely new to me. after you break the wing apart, you just pull everything off the bone in one pull with your mouth. then you can pick at the other half, which is the tip of the wing, opting to chew some of the smaller bones that aren’t going to tear open your stomach. i’ve never been a big fan of chicken wings, or meat-on-the-bone in general, but i’m now a believer.
the beer is pretty cheap for being arguably the best japanese brew, and their menu is big enough to get standard izakaya fare if the wings aren’t your cup of tea. and i just found out there’s a location in kawaguchi. i wonder how long it will take to be known by name there…
i started orientation for my new gig yesterday, and i’m almost a certified english teacher! already, i’m having some doubts about the job, and the fact that i’m not getting paid for these three long days isn’t helping.
there are only a few other people getting certified in my group, and i can’t see myself becoming close to any of them. one guy is from scottland, and has some kind of small-man (or country)-syndrome. all he does is talk about all the great, and rather unimportant things scottland has done for the world. i’m sure the country is a lot of fun, and i hope to visit someday, but this guy is building it up too much. the only girl in the group is canadian, and she’s pleasant enough. there’s nothing wrong with her; i just don’t think we have much in common.
there’s an older guy from alabama, and he has been living here for like 20+ years. he’s got a japanese wife, and a daughter who’s in high school, and if you weren’t actually in japan when he told you this, you’d call him a liar. he spends most of the time complaining about japanese people and talking about how he does so many things just to spite them. i can’t understand why people want to come here and basically never adapt to the culture or language, but here he is, a red-blooded american who can’t understand why the japanese don’t adapt to him.
finally, there’s jon. he’s a real piece of work. i know i’m the one with the blog here, but this guy really loves talking about himself. before we even got started, there was some higher-up greeting us individually, and jon ended up talking to him for like 15 minutes, never giving the guy a chance to break away. every time the instructors ask us a question, he chimes in with ‘his method’, and why it’s better than gaba’s. during our lunch break, he told us all about his 200kg wife (that’s over 400 pounds…), and how she loves to eat. lucky for me, i was finished eating by then. it’s going to be hilarious to see how he does in actual lessons with students.
UPDATE: it appears jon’s style…not his teaching style, but rather his life style…is not what gaba’s looking for. he was pretty much taken out of the orientation halfway through the final day, and i’ll never get to find out what happened. he took down everyone’s email address, so i gave him my hotmail account.
i’ve got a new apartment in kawaguchi, about 15 minutes by foot from aya’s, and it’s significantly cheaper than my place las—HOLY CRAP EARTHQUAKE!
UPDATE 03/13: so that sucked. i was just finishing unpacking the few things i have when japan’s largest earthquake in recorded history hit. at a magnitude of 9.0, it’s in the top 5 of the world’s biggest quakes since modern quake-measuring scales were created. soon after, a massive tsunami (over 35m high) hit the east coast of japan, wiping out buildings about 10km from the shore. over the next hour, there were several aftershocks almost as powerful as the initial quake, and we’ve had aftershocks on several occasions since. furthermore, it caused a bunch of cooling failures at the nuclear plant in Fukushima, which means radiation is leaking out, and we could have a nuclear meltdown on our hands.
tokyo is really far from the area damaged by the nuclear power plants, so i’m not really worried for now. however, tons of foreign news i’ve been reading seem to have their head up their ass, printing scaremongering headlines without much fact-checking. i don’t have proper internet at my apartment yet, so i basically have to rely on finding an open wifi signal with my iphone, and then i’m faced with the task of getting reliable news coverage.
in contrast, the japanese media seems to be downplaying the nuclear disaster. there’s no cover-up or anything, but i think the reports are subdued a bit to keep panic to a minimum. as expected (and i guess this comes as a shock to western civilization), there aren’t a bunch of people running around going crazy. people are still waiting in lines to buy stuff, and i haven’t read about any riots. all is not perfect, however, and it seems people are buying up all the instant ramen, water, and bread they can find, whether they really need it or not.
at the same time aya was helping me find the capybara onsen, we located the biggest standing buddha in japan, and the third tallest statue in the world: the ushiku daibutsu!
at 120m, it’s almost three times as tall as the statue of liberty, and it could hold nara’s famous daibutsu in its hand. it even makes the christ of the ozarks statue look like a joke at only 20m…wait…christ of the ozarks?
there’s an elevator inside the body that takes you up to a lookout in its chest. and while the view isn’t anything to write home about (though, i’m clearly doing that now), its surrounding gardens are quite nice. there’s even a petting zoo attached to the gardens, but it too is nothing special.
recently, sarah emailed me to ask about this capybara onsen in japan. i’ve never seen one in real life, so the video of this giant, cute rodent chilling under some hot spring water was enough to start me on a small obsession. before i knew it, i was googling the crap out of this animal, trying to find out where i can find one.
with aya’s help, we found a children’s petting zoo that has a capybara onsen! a day later, we were on a train, heading north to the zoo. these things are huge! and they make the most adorable sounds. it was difficult to pet them because they are behind a fence, but just watching them was fun. the grounds keeper turned on the water in the bath, and a bunch of them jumped right in. sadly, it was sort of warm, so they didn’t hang out too long.
the zoo had a bunch of other animals that were fun to look at, and they even had some dinosaurs. i wrestled a few, but steered clear of the t-rex. i’m going to have to train a bit before i take that one on.
