It was a little strange living so far from our friends and families. This is especially true on the holidays. But there were many other foreigners who were in the same boat. To help make everyone feel more at home, a couple ambitious people organized a huge thanksgiving dinner. (Let's have a big round of applause for Jim and Carmen!) There was about 80 people in all, most of whom were foreigners, but everyone was welcome. It was a great feast with all the trimmings. This is impressive because the 'trimmings' can be a little tough to come by in this neck of the woods. They had to order the turkeys from Osaka (I think) and most ovens is this country are far too small for a turkey. But in the end, everything worked out great. Pumpkin pie never tasted better than it did that night!
Jane, on the left, is from South Africa. Camilla is from Denmark. They have both returned to their respective homes.
We did have a Christmas tree. Sort of. It was only about 2 feet high, but we made the most of it. And by putting it on top of the bookshelf, we were even able to put presents under it!
There's a group of foreigners spread throughout the prefecture who've put together a soccer team. It was a very informal group - we only played games when someone is ambitious enough to contact another team and try to arrange it. This actually occured a grand total of 1 times in the entire year. Here's a group photo of the 2 teams after the game. If you look carefully, you'll find me in the back row being kissed by some Japanese guy.
We're actually pretty disappointed that we didn't discover the group a few months earlier. There just aren't enough activities in the world where you get to hit things as hard as you can.
We were fortunate enough to make some good friends in our time in Japan. And even more fortunate, that our friend Adam Duran had his wedding while we were there. Adam, from San Fransisco, married Michiko, a local girl. It was a traditional Japanese Bhuddist ceremony. That means that Sue and I had no clue what was actually happenning. I know that we bowed a lot, and some priest guy was swinging branches at everyone as some sort of blessing. It was a very memorable event. One of these days, I'm going to have to ask Adam what happened.
One of the strangest events we particaped in was the Mikoshi. The large shrine is actually called a mikoshi. One morning,
a huge group of 100+ people gathered and carried around these massive shrines on our shoulders. As near as I can figure,
this was done as a way of saying thank-you to the various businesses which had donated money into some sort of community
improvement fund. We were in teams of roughly 20 people with 10 or 12 carrying the mikoshi at a time. We wandered around
the downtown area yelling 'YASUI' at the top of our lungs, and when we reached one of the businesses, we threw the mikoshi
into the air 3 times and then spun
around in a circle 3 times as fast as we could. Did I mention that these shrines weighed upwards of 300 or 400 pounds? It was
quite the spectacle. And if you happened to be holding one of the ends during the spin, you had to hang on for dear life
because it was surpisingly like a game of crack the whip. If you didn't hold on tight, you were thrown off into the
nearest parked car or drainage ditch. Did I mention that there was a lot of alcohol involved? I smile everytime I think
of it. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, we all had very sore shoulders and had won first prize for being the
most GENKI (enthusiastic, energetic, happy, etc). Then we went drinking some more.
Take a look at an amazing city - Kyoto!
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