Happy Birthday Hannah!!!!

(PICTURE: Even as a little kid, Hannah was able to fill big shoes.)

Minus a couple years in my teens, I have always been immensely proud of my sister. She is without a doubt the smartest, kindest, funniest person I have ever known. One of the things I hold to be unshakable in this world is that if my sister puts her mind to something, it will get done.*

Today is Hannah's birthday and I'm trying to pinpoint the exact moment when she went from being the most adorable little kid ever, to a beautiful, hard working, HOME OWNING woman. I made a video to help me wrap my head around it.

Love you, Hannah!

* The rare exception was when Hannah took kickboxing lessons to try and fight me (hence the line about a few years in my teens) and only proceeded to embarrass herself every time I would catch her leg and then give her a taste of her own medicine (if her medicine was stronger and swifter and actually hurt).

My Japanese Best Friends

(PICTURE: Masumi and Kensuke.)

I consider myself to be really really really lucky. I've made some good friends out here in a short period of time who have made my Japanese experience countless times better than it would be without them. A few weeks ago I went out to a bar with Paula, her friend Lydia and some friends of Lydia and some friends of friends of Lydia. While out that night I befriended Masumi, the one Japanese person there.

Since that night I have become very good friends with Masumi and her husband Kensuke who happen to live about a five minute walk from my house. To say that Masumi and Kensuke are awesome would be a huge understatement. I feel like I have gotten to see another side of Japan since hanging out with them. In the upcoming days I'll talk about a few of the things I've done with them but first I thought I would point something funny out:

The first time I met Kensuke AND the first time I met Yuya (Paula's amazing husband) I saw them naked rougly within the first hour of shaking their hands. Hold on, hold on, Japan isn't some bizzare swinging culture. No, we went to an onsen together.

I've mentioned in a prior blog, at the Japanese baths the sexes are seperated and everyone is in the buff minus a tiny little wash-cloth-esque towel. Upon meeting both Kensuke and Yuya we headed straight to an onsen to take a bath. To me, this is truly a unique Japanese experience. Could you imagine meeting your friend's significant other in America and then immediately getting naked with them to have your first chat? Both times this has happened to me, I've felt like I was on a very strange first date where my friend's husbands got to size me up.

Okonomiyaki

(PICTURE: Okonomiyaki.)

As everyone knows, I'm a pretty big eater. One of my favorite things about living abroad is that I get to eat so much good food. As I've said to Paula a few times, "When I'm living in Japan I don't want to eat anything except Japanese food."

One Japanese food that I never ate prior to coming here is okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is a savoury "pancake" with a variety of ingredients. To be honest, taste wise, this is probably my least favorite dish I've had in Japan so far. That's not to say I think it is bad, I just think it is okay. The experience of going to an okonomiyaki place is worth trying it at least once though. As you can see from the picture, you get to cook your own pancake at your table. Generally I'm not a fan of cooking for myself because a) if I wanted to cook for myself I would have stayed home and cooked b) I'm scared that I'll mess up what I'm cooking.

My one okonomiyaki experience was perfect because the owner stood at our table and cooked for us. This meant a) someone was cooking besides me b) I'm assuming it was not messed up.

I should also mention that this is the closest thing I've seen to a "Japanese Hibachi" like the Benihana chain in the states. From what I've gathered there are no hibachis in Japan where a chef flips shrimp into his hat. Yes, I'm as sad at this as you are.

Someone is watching you...

I was at my university on a weekend and decided to check out the view from the tallest building on my campus. The view was really gorgeous because Koryama is surrounded by mountains on all sides with rice fields at the base of the mountains. However, this post isn't about that view. While I was up top I looked down and saw two girls practicing some kind of dance moves. Clearly they thought nobody was watching...

Older Japanese Hikers

(PICTURE: Some standard Japanese hikers.)

Paula has commented to me a couple of times that older Japanese people are in ridiculously good shape. Well, that is putting it lightly.

As Paula and I hiked Bondai, every person who would pass us on the trail was roughly 20-40 years older than us. I would guesstimate that the average person climbing the mountain was 60-65 years old.

Not only were the people older than us, but they were also carrying decent size bags. As you may recall from a couple of blogs ago, I met two professors on top of the mountain. I would bet the both professors are in their mid 70s. One of the professors had literally carried a small cooler with beers up the mountain so he could enjoy a frosty brew at the end of his hike while the other had carried two large plastic jugs to take air samples.

As I hiked, I kept trying to picture my parents or their friends doing the hike we were doing. My parents and their friends are around 60 and I can say with total confidence that not one of them could possibly have climbed that mountain without having to be picked up by a helicopter once they reached the top. I don't mean any offense to my parents or their friends but these older Japanese people are bionic. Frankly they are even in much better shape than I am because I was sore as hell for a solid five days after the hike.

Bubbling Water

How many times have you seen a puddle on the ground that was bubbling?



This was a pretty cool site to see but also a reminder that I was walking on a volcano! I'm fairly/moronically cocky that given a head start I could potentially outrun a bear, but outrunning an explosive volcano is probably not gonna happen.

BEAR!!!!!!!!!

On the drive towards Bondai, I noticed that the little bell in Paula's car was missing. Apparently Yuya had forgotten to put the bell back after our hike the previous week. I started to make half jokes about being mauled by a bear and decided to buy any noise-making apparatus at a road-side 7-11. The best thing I could find was a little trinket that had a bell in it. The trinket made the slightest noise but at least it was something. I tied it to my shoe for our hike and added an extra little kick to my step so that the bell would toll. This bell made more of a peep though.

(PICTURE: My original "bear bell" on the right and a real bear bell that I now own on the left.)

At the beginning of the trail was a LARGE sign warning about bears. This got my heart rate going a little bit anytime I'd hear a twig break or a bird in a bush. As we hiked and passed fellow mountain climbers, Paula would ask people if they saw a bear. The response was always the same: a shake of the head and a laugh. Nobody had seen a bear...EVER.

After meeting Tom and Tom (see yesterday's post) we stopped at a random shack/restaurant on the mountain:

(PICTURE: You can see the shack/restaurant in the middle of this picture if you look close.)

While at the restaurant, we asked the woman who worked there if she ever saw a bear in all her years of working on the mountain. The woman told us that she had seen a bear only once. Tom #1 asked her what she did and she said, "I turned around and ran as fast as I could." Tom #1 said, "That's not what you are supposed to do if you see a bear." The woman replied, "I know but I was scared and wanted to run!"

This isn't the advised approach to survive a bear encounter but the woman was in one piece to tell the story so clearly it can't be that bad to run from a bear. Anyway, the woman not-so-coincidentally sold bear bells at her shack/restaurant. I bought the largest bear bell they had which was probably the smartest purchase of my life. The noise my new bell made was a good ten times louder than the trinket tied to my shoe. The piece of mind I got from the bell was priceless. As we hiked back down the mountain Paula made some comment about being disappointed that we didn't see any wildlife. I told her to shush it because we still had 20 minutes to go and talk like that would surely get us mauled.

Well, after a long hike back, Paula and I got to the parking lot where her car was. We saw no bears. We pulled out of the parking lot and started to drive down the mountain road. We had driven for about thirty seconds when I saw a bush start rustling ahead of us. Paula slowed down the car and sure enough A BEAR WALKED ON TO THE ROAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(REENACTMENT PICTURE: The picture I was too slow to take myelf and thus had to steal from the internet.)

I quickly tried to find my camera but I was too slow. The bear, having been scared by us, darted back into the woods. Paula and I looked at each other and both started to scream like little school girls, "A bear! We saw a bear!!!!" As strange as it may sound, seeing the bear has probably been my favorite highlight in Japan. Every Japanese person that I tell the story too looks shocked, "You saw a bear? No way. I've never seen a bear."

I can't really tell you how happy I was to see a bear. But I can tell you that I was even happier that I saw the bear while in Paula's car.