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Published: February 1st 2006
Hadakameri Festival
The group of men before the 45 minute walk.Hi!
Yeah, we have internet at home!!!! Although, I can't promise that the postings will be more frequent. It does mean that we can now messenger, talk for free on-line and we have a land line now so it is much cheaper to call us!
The pics are of the Hadakemeri festival I told you about last week.
Things are great over here. Colin's job is going well and his main complaint is that he doesn't get to see daylight, since it gets dark just after 4pm and he gets home around 7. Japan doesn't follow daylight savings time so it is supposed to get dark at 7pm in the summer! He bought a Hiking in Japan Lonely Planet and is busy planning hikes for every long weekend during the next year.
I start training for my full time job this weekend and have been busy planning my trip around Japan for when my mom comes to visit. I am also planning my trip home, really all I've thought about is all the restaurants I want to eat at! Thankfully, Colin's parents sent us a good supply of Western food! I went for tabehodai (all you can
eat) pizza today with a friend. There are strange pizza toppings in Japan! I had one with canned tuna and scrambled egg, another with corn and mayonaise, and a dessert pizza with custard and strawberries. Most of them were surprisingly good.
There is a backlog of things to tell you about. The city we live in is famous for Wanko Soba, which is a noodle eating competition. Soba is thin buckwheat noodles that we often eat in soup, so we thought we'd give wanko soba a try... We knew we in trouble when they gave us aprons. The waitresses stand over you and fill your bowl the instant you are done; to stop you have to eat every trace of noodles in your bowl and put a lid on it before the waitress can fill it again. I ate 48 bowls and Colin 72 bowls! When we tell people from Morioka, they say it was a nice first try. I enjoyed it until my 22nd bowl, after that it was disgusting. One of the guys we were with ate 132 bowls! And the guy I work for ate 50 bowls in 5 minutes for a TV contest! Our guide
Looks like hard work!
They were synchronized and almost every step was a lunge book says the record it 350 bowls--sick! We had lots of fun, but won't do it again.
The advertisement in the train station says (picture bellow):
Even if I anything doesn't dress up, I can become beautiful.
Why : it?
Of course.
...this shop...
I think it is for a hair salon. I love the Japanese version of English! It rarely makes sense, but provides endless entertainment.
Our Japanese friends often say things that make sense but we would never say. For example: "let's have fun together", "you make me happy" and "okie dokie"!
I made the mistake of forwarding Colin an email I got, with the latest advice a Japanese person sent me. Our friend Minimidate calls Colin "Dam" because his last name is Dams. He sent me an email and the last lines were "Don't fight with Dam. Love him tender!"
We've been laughing about it for days.
We had a great time in Miyako! I miss the ocean! It was exciting to see seagulls and walk along the cliffs and beaches. We took some back roads and found a small shrine on a cliff, it was amazing! It was nice to see something
Offerings
Once they reach the shrine they exchange the offering they carried for a sip of Asake new and get out of the city. Also, there was no snow there!
OK, so I wrote all of this last Thursday when we got internet and thought I'd attach pictures of Miyko later, which were gorgeous with turquoise water and amazing cliffs. And then our computer died and it happens to have the only copies of all of the 400+ pictures we've taken in Japan! We had just bought CDs to back up the pictures but hadn't gotten around to it--we sure learned that lesson. Four days of bliss having Internet at home and the computer dies!!!! I'm still in shock. So if anyone has an old laptop that they don't want anymore let me know!
Hope you are all fantastic!
Love Maddy and Colin
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