Our new friend

We wandered past this little produce shop in Gifu, City. This is the owner. She came out to talk to us after I started taking pictures of her vegetables. She was very happy to show us her products.

She even had Will smell the delicious melon, which was 200 yen. (about $2)

It was funny! She also showed us some fresh ginger.

"Very fresh, very delicious. Ginger." That's what I assume she said

Here is the inside of her store. We bought some of these spiced cookie/cracker things. They smell good, like cinnamon and cloves. We almost bought $25 honey. We thought it was $5, but discovered it was much more at the checkout. So, we didn't buy it. She gave us a free tomato as a present. Then we left the shop with cookies in hand and a tomato, when suddenly she ran to give us an apple. She told us to come back. We will, if we can find it again. :)

This shop was located in this very big and bizarre indoor/outdoor mall
It has a wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanagase

 We think that the mall is in the downtown area of gifu, and is a covered section of older streets that were too narrow for car traffic, but ok for pedestrian traffic. Then they converted it into a mall. So its very twisting and surprising, with a whole lot of narrow alleyway corridors and very many stores and restaurants. I am not sure we even saw very much of it today. Also, today was a national holiday in Japan, for the Autumn Equinox, so a lot of the stores were closing early. We are going to go back on Saturday and take more pictures.

A bird has gotta eat too!

I

So, yesterday I was out on the balcony getting laundry when I heard a tapping sound. I peered out and there was a large black bird on the roof across from the balcony. It was having a delicious breakfast of what I suspect was rodent. I decided to take pictures!

Yum, nothing like a good rodent to start your day!

This is my lunch, no one better touch it!

Oh yeah, gonna eat some more, num num num num!

This is the view from our balcony. It gives you a good idea of how far away it was. Plus you can see the lovely Japanese homes. What an experience. Next time I hope I'll have a nicer camera, but if I do there won't be a bird enjoying lunch on the roof.

Japanese noodles

So on Friday I went out with my senior class. Will also came along. I don't have too many pictures of this lovely day, but I'll do my best to tell you about it. First, I'll tell you about this class. It's a group of four women. They are somewhere in their 50-60s. They are fantastic! Their English is very limited, but they sure do have a wonderful time using what they do know. Last week in class we were talking about our favorite food. They told me about Japanese noodles. They were shocked when they learned I hadn't had them yet. So, they decided they wanted to take Will and I out the following week for lunch. So, we met them on Friday September 10 at 12:00 pm. We rode with two of the students to meet the other two ladies at "Mifuku" a traditional Japanese noodle restaurant.

To the right is a bowl of Japanese noodles. In the back corner is a plate of tempura, which is basically fried deliciousness. The tempura was 1 eggplant, 1 butternut squash, 1 large shrimp and some cute green leaf. You take this ground up daikon, which is Asian radish and put it in the middle bowl. I am not sure what that sauce was, but you dip your tempura in it. Behind the noodles, there is a block of tofu with green onions and soy sauce, it was surprisingly delicious. Then there was plain rice in which you put the Japanese pickles into. The little plate next to the sauce was the pickles.

Here's a different angle of the food.

Now for some bad photography.....oh well :( I pretty much just grabbed the camera out of my purse and snapped the picture with out looking.

Hiromi, Hitoko, and Noriko not pictured is Shegeiko.

It was time to go. Hitomi didn't eat all her tempura, Will was secretly wishing he could have eaten it. 

This is where we sat to eat. On the floor, it was quite lovely. 

Since Will's 3:00 class was canceled, they decided to take us out for coffee. We then went to Framboise, the same place we got our cake for our 1 year anniversary. There are two parts to this shop. One is the bakery (where we went went) the second is a cafe in a separate building where the serve drinks and food. We had coffee and cake. I had strawberry cake and Will had peach cake. It was really amazing. We really enjoyed it. Sorry, no pictures :(

After this they took us back to school and I had class with them. Will sat in with me, because they just wanted to chat. We learned one interesting thing about Japan, apparently they are in to knowing your blood type. This has to do with some sort of horoscope thing. Will is O- and I don't know what I am. They were so shocked I didn't know. I guess I should find out. But, apparently blood type matters for your personality and what blood type your mate should be. So, just the same idea as the zodiac thing, but with blood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_types_in_Japanese_culture

Well they left at 10 to 3, because Will was yawning and we were all stuffed with food. We ran home to get a few things ready for the rest of the day.

Ramen!

On Wednesday My first class is at 3:00 and William's first class is at 4:20. Starting next week he will go to the kindergarten school at 12. So, his day will be very long.  I have a break from 6:30-8:45. Will finishes at 6:30, so we like to grab something to eat.

William came later so he brought the camera. On the way in he was greeted by one of my junior high students. His name is Katsutoshi.

Katsutoshi is the one doing the peace sign. The other one is his friend.

A little about Katsutoshi....Well, he's a very funny kid....how can you not like him...just look at his picture. Although he is the source of problems in JH class. He likes to talk the entire class in Japanese. When I first started teaching the two tables were facing each other so that they could look and talk to each other and ignore their fabulous teacher, which is me. I need attention, lol. Also last week he thought it would be funny to hide my pens in a game while my back was turned writing on the board. I thought I was going crazy.....but the next day when I pulled the game out there were both of my pens.....I knew they were up to no good, lol.

After all of that, I decided that I should change the placement of the desk as well as have Will come into my class. It's fortunate that he is available when that class takes place. We learned in our Oxford Seminars class from our wonderful teacher, Laura, that desk placement and seat assignments can be crucial for a good classroom. Turns out that moving the tables and assigning seat were a HUGE help. Also Will was able to give a little extra attention to the student who needs it the most. He also likes Queen and video games.

Now back to the point of this blog. We decided to go to ramen for dinner. Ramen is a noodle soup that is not very much like very cheap packets of dried noodles you get in America. Obviously that's where the noodle packets gets the name, ramen. It is very delicious and has vegetables and meat. We had a big bill and we were afraid it might too be to big for the ramen shop to change it. So we decided to go to Seria the 100 yen shop which is like the Japanese Dollar Tree.

It's so wonderful, i love that place!

Will's been into yo-yoing since he found a yo-yo at school. Yesterday he broke the yo-yo while trying to "walk the dog". So, we decided to buy him a new yo-yo and also a little rug for the bathroom.

yay! a red rug....ps I look crazy!

On the way to ramen there is a restaurant called Big Boy which is American....It's really funny that it's here.

You can't really tell but on the inside of the shop it says "hamburg" instead of hamburger.

Now here's the Ramen shop. I don't know what it's called.

yay for ramen!

Here we are in the shop.

I am so ashamed that I am doing a peace sign. Boo!

I love this picture you can see the guy in the background firing up our ramen!! oh yeah. We were the only ones in there at this time :)

They give us a pitcher of water. how nice!

By the way you take your shoes off and sit on the floor. It's very nice and relaxing. We are sitting on traditional tatami .

Our meal is served. We both had soy ramen. It's the best ever. I wish I was eating some more right now!! It's very filling and the bowls are huge! It only cost us ¥1300 (less than $15) for the two us....no tipping in Japan and no tax!!!!

Presents!

On Tuesday I got some presents from my adult class. Two of them were on vacation the week before, so they brought back sweets from where they had been in Japan.

A famous treat from Tokyo.

They were delicious banana cakes :) yum!

Delicious rice crispy pastry/pie treats.

I forgot the name of the city they came from, I will find out though.

This next treat came from my other student, Yoko. She did not go any where last week. She actually works at a soy milk factory where they make so many flavors of soy milk!

The white one was black tea soy milk. The pink one was strawberry soy milk. The brown one was coffee soy milk. The green one was green tea soy milk. The yellow was banana soy milk. There was one other while one which was yogurt flavored. I didn't take a picture because I did not realize the two white ones were different. I asked the secretary to tell us. My favorite was coffee, although I was expecting chocolate. Will's favorite was green tea. They were all very delicious and far superior to any soy milk I have ever had in the states. 

This next gift was a gift from one of Will's students. It was half eaten by the time I took a picture of it.

Some sort of delicious apple taffy like candy! It's called Hi-Chew, not to be confused with Chu-Hi the alcoholic soda

The Wrong Side of the Road on the way to the River!

When we first arrived to Japan we did not realize that they drive on the wrong side of the Road. For some people this might be common knowledge, however, for us it was not. We only discovered this when we were flying over Japan, looking out the window at the little cars down on the ground. I just assumed it was only Britain and certain former British colonies that did that. We looked up which countries drive on the right side of the road vs. the left side. Here's what we found....

The countries that are blue drive on the left side and all the red countries drive on the right. As you can see, most of the world drives on the right. Therefore, it is my conclusion that the left side is the wrong side of the road

can you guess which one it is?

Here's a picture of our car from our kitchen window. We drive a Nissan March. We are lucky that our school provides us with this car. Many people who get teaching jobs do not get cars. We only have to pay car insurance which is roughly the same as what you pay in the states.It is a small car by American standards, and Will looks ridiculous getting into it. Also its like driving a go-kart. But it is pretty typical by Japanese commuter standards, and we are lucky to have it.

Our car is the orange one! Here's Will getting into it now. He always walks to the correct side of the car, which is wrong side of the car in the country where they drive on the wrong side of the road. If he could remember to walk to the left side of car, he would be on right side.

 Will! 

Now we are off on our adventure to the Nagara River or one of its tributaries. We could see the river on the side of the road, but we had a terrible time trying to find a place to pull off and park. We stopped at this cafe where there was a walkway down to the river. However, I thought it looked a little too dangerous of a spot to swim. Will thought it would have been fine, but even so it didn't look like a nice spot to swim. There were no rocks to sit on nearby. So, back on the road we went. We found this pull off, so we stopped and parked our car.

We weren't  sure we could park here, but it seemed like the thing to do.....so we did!

At first at the guard rail we noticed some stairs that lead to the river so we walked over to investigate.

If you look way off in the distance you can see a little red flag. It's right across from the orange one. There were some stairs that seemed to lead down the river. It was all very mysterious

nope just stairs to the power box :(

We were very sad to see that these stairs did not lead to a place to swim. We looked around, but there was no way to go. It was so hot, and the river was so tantalizing.

no way down :( booooo

Look at the cool freshing water so nice and lush just teasing us. It was not yet refreshing because how can you be refreshed if you have not yet been freshed?

I was very sad!

Not a happy camper! No way down, and I am so hot! hey look at our cute car in the distance!

So, it was back to the car again, driving around trying to figure something out. We ended up right back to the same spot again, because we saw a road just a little way down. We didn't want to drive down it because we were unsure if it was ok to drive the car down. It looked like it would have been stuck. We were wrong about that though, for future reference. So, we parked the car again and walked down the path, crossed the street and went down the dirt road.

some pretty trees on the side of the path. The picture does not give it justice to it's beauty.

Finally we made it! we climbed down the path and into the insanely cold water!

There is a Japanese fisherman behind me. I am not sure he caught anything the whole time we were there. I hope we didn't bother him

So cool and refreshing, oh yeah!

After some time in the shallow part of the river (don't worry mom, it was only about a two feet where I was sitting) we went back. Next time we will be more adventurous and go to the deeper part after the rapids. On our way back to our car we noticed something interesting.

A shrine of some sort.

p.s. don't litter, ok!

This time I had the courage to drive on the wrong side of the road.

Oh yeah driving like a pro.

Ok so everything turned out to be nice. We had a great time! If we have another hot day we will go back again! :) We are considering going tomorrow, maybe. If we feel like it.

This was on my laptop. A Japanese mosquito, this is how they charge....they don't need blood.