Sunday, January 30, 2011

Wintery Conditions and School Happenings

We said we wouldn't have much to say for the next couple of months and we weren't lying!  It has been a colder than usual winter here, coldest in ten years, so we've gotten a lot of fluffy snow instead of heavy, wet slush, sleet, or what passed for snow our first winter here.  We've been doing a lot of work (at least, Lee has), had some winter colds (Ana) and enjoyed the snow and warmth where we can find it.


The main roads and many parking lots are still regularly being cleared with water.  This leads to very treacherous terrain at night, after the sun goes down and the layer of water on the pavement freezes.  I've nearly gotten hit a couple of times from cars being unable to stop when coming down side streets.  One other somewhat odd winter weather norm here is that residential back roads have no snow removal system.  No sprinklers and no regular plows, so unless it's really bad and they send out the tractors (can be days before your street gets done) you're on your own. The residents are expected to shovel the road in front of their house.  You can tell where the likely retired (therefore highly conscientious and free-time-possessing) neighbors are because they have a perfectly clear roadway across the length of their property, with sharp lines between their frontage and that of the next house down.  Non-retired people have to shovel when they can, and for men who leave for work around 7 AM and return at 10 or 11 PM the shoveling can occur at hours that would be unusual in the states. The scraping of shovels has both kept us up and woken us early, including on weekends as the Japanese work Saturdays.

We're pretty sure this is the emergency backup plan.  Plan A involves it not snowing.  Plan B is, just drive over it, wait for a citizen to shovel it, or pour water on it.  Plan C involves people with not much plowing experience manning a not-very-large fleet of tractors, and they only come out when it gets deep enough that cars are becoming unable to drive in it without becoming stuck

See that road on the right? Hand-cleared in the wee hours by people with shovels.  This was taken on a Sunday, which is the one day of the week when most people can shovel during daylight.

Some amusing things in and around the school:


The school is really touting its recent joining of the CDIO Initiative.  Thus far, there has been a lot of talk and boasting of their position as the first Japanese institution to join, including this sign loudly proclaiming their membership in the global group of schools, which incidentally is probably breaking international trademark regulations by using of the logos of the other schools involved without their permission.


The architecture students have displays up every so often in one of the buildings I have a class in.  I found a model of the house from the Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro, along with adorable needle felted Totoro and the little soot fairies hanging out in the front yard.


Next month will be the final presentations of the robots in my fourth year class (2009, 2010) and we have one group that is making a Cat Bus robot, also from My Neighbor Totoro.  It's shaping up quite nicely, and I cannot wait to see it run!  This year is one of the better groups of students, and I'll post what they've come up with sometime next month, when they've finally finished them.  Our next post will be up shortly - a festival came up that sounded too interesting to miss (sorry, not the Penis Festival) so we'll end up have one substantial post for January after all.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Monkeys!

Our in-Japan fun-things-to-do list is still pretty long, and so in our final a-bit-more-than-a-year left we're picking and choosing things off of it to do.  One thing that we recently chose was going to see the Snow Monkeys (Japanese Macaques) that hang out in the natural hot springs near Nagano.  This winter break was the perfect opportunity, as we've been running quite a bit for the last few months and wanted, as Lee says, an actual vacation.  We spent most of our week and a half break at home, and went to see the monkeys for a two-night trip.

Apparently the monkeys also want to see us

We decided that if we were going to go stay in a Japanese-style hotel it might as well be a nice one to celebrate Christmas, New Year's and the fact that we personally are now in the black.  Counting our (limited) assets and subtracting our (ever-shrinking) debt, we have a positive net worth!  We're quite pleased.

From the train, heading north

In celebration we bought some actual from-France Champagne and luxury-type snack items like real cheese and actual crackers and headed up to our hotel, where we'd booked a room with a private hot spring bath on the private balcony, instead having to use the communal baths in the rest of the hotel.  This was a very good perk; we used the bath a lot and enjoyed the chill of the open-air shower with the heat of the bath.  We've both done communal hot springs several times, but private is for-sure better.

This was walking around in the Naoetsu train station
We spent two nights in the ryokan, named Kokuya, which included breakfast and dinner each night as well.  They chauffeured us from the small but highly English-friendly train station to their very English-friendly hotel.  Our travel agent remarked that foreigners seem to be highly interested in seeing these snow monkeys; the Japanese do not tend to make pilgrimages to seek them out.  They do have a camera focused on the monkeys all the time here, if you'd like to watch.  There were obviously quite a few Japanese tourists as well, but it seems as though they are typically semi-local and taking a break in a very nice hot spring town, which this certainly was.  Shibu Onsen, the town we stayed in, had obviously been re-done in many ways and felt like a Japanese version of Main Street in Disney World.  It's very old-style Japanese, but glamorized, updated, and tourist-y.

And scrupulously clean

Once getting us settled in, after getting us the correctly sized yukata (cotton robes you can wear in the hotel or around town without getting funny looks) and giving us matcha (green tea) and okashi (sweets eaten with green tea), the guide outlined the general rules and procedures of the area and left us to our own devices.  We took a dip in the bath, enjoyed the kotatsu (table with a built-in heater and a blanket attached under the table surface), and wore our yukata down to dinner.  Sadly, we forgot to bring the camera down, but it was delicious!  Very Japanese, but with enough cognizance of the Western audience to make it really shine for us.  The waitstaff didn't always have good English skills, and I was able to use my small amount of Japanese to understand and be understood quite well.  One of the perks of the higher-end room was a private dining room for meals, which is probably a first for us.

Our private balcony bath, very hot, and with zero naked Japanese people in it

The next day, we had our Western-style breakfast (again forgetting the camera) and ventured out to see the monkeys.  It was a fairly nice walk up to the monkey park - the day was clear and brisk, the walk was uphill but only enough to warm the walkers, not enough to be strenuous, though there was a bit of dangerous ice here and there along the road.  We headed out early and met almost exclusively Australians along the way, who were probably on summer break.  Getting to the park was pretty straightforward, and we met two monkeys near the parking area that seemed to be toll monkeys.  One attempted to pick the pocket of a woman walking by, and also jumped at a man trying to get in the picture with it.

  Path leading to monkey park

English signs, for the tourists

We expected a fairly large nature park, with various springs that may or may not hold monkeys at any given time.  What we found was a fairly treacherous walkway down a stairway covered in ice to a geyser:



and past that, a short path to one small spring that held nearly all of the monkeys with all the tourists gathered around it:


They are not at all afraid of people, and if you check out the Flickr set, you'll see quite a few pictures of the monkeys looking particularly murderous.  I apparently used up all of my good luck for the weekend in getting this video clip.  The monkey jumped on cue, and those legs right near him are Lee's.  They were, on the whole, pretty cute.


Note the murder in the monkey's eyes



That evening we dined again in a private room.  Dinner was quite good, though there was a trout dish that I wouldn't have minded never having again.  We got pictures of everything this time, and over both nights had to concede that while this hotel definitely served traditional Japanese cuisine, they had, probably through experience, built menus that actually tasted good to foreigners, except that we have a history with the trout.


Note that it also pleaded with us not to eat it - see the expression?

After dinner, a world-famous shakuhachi (flute) player who, they told us, had performed at Carnegie Hall was staying at the ryokan and decided to give an impromptu concert with a local shamisen (3-string guitar) player.  It was a good performance, though I enjoyed the local artist more than the famous one.  Here's one video; there are two more in the Flickr set.  Being an impromtu concert, it was about 40 minutes long, which was about right as it was interesting and enjoyable to a certain extent but nothing I needed two hours of.


This hotel also had a hole in the floor showing off the hot spring that feed the baths.  We couldn't get a great shot of it, but here you go:


We had another Western-style breakfast the next morning, and I've learned that very strong plain yogurt with some sweet blueberry jam is absolutely delicious.  Western does not necessarily mean US, as you can see.  Note the salad is raw undressed cabbage, which is what the Japanese think goes into salad.  You can go to the salad bar at work and not find any lettuce.  Sorry for the blur:


Dinner rolls, fruit, a salad with a tomato, delicious yogurt and jam, scrambled eggs with mustard and ketchup, a bacon-like product, and a wilted spinach.  I traded my grapefruit for Lee's yogurt, and we were both happy.

Three trains and a bus later, we were back home.  Go see Flickr for the rest of the pictures!