LAST DAY OF FUJI ROCK

FIRST DAY W/NO RAIN. ちょうたのしよ！

AT FUJI ROCK! GONNA SEE ME SOME CAKE, KAISER CHIEFS, POGUES, & FOO FIGHTERS TODAY! たのしみ！

FUJI ROCK IKIMASHOU!

I AM LEAVING FOR FUJI ROCK RIGHT NOW!!!! From the pics I have seen it looks like it is going to be great! and Beth just emailed saying she has a ticket for tommorrow!! Can't wait to dance for three days straight (even if I am feeling way-uner-the-weather- not going to let being sick stop me!)
http://www.fujirockfestival.com

THE PALACE OF WONDER　(C)F-8 Co., Ltd. YASUYUKI KASAGI

BOARD WALK　(C) Noriteru Ino

Sayonara....now it's time to say goodbye...

It has officially been a year since I have been here. With that being said, it has been truly wonderful thus far. I have moved successfully to Japan and established a life here. Crazy. I must say that the people I have met here are some of the strongest, greatest people I have ever met in my life. I am truly going to miss being surrounded with such beauty all the time. So to those of you who are not staying and have finished your contract, all my love and best of luck with the life that lays before you. You are in my heart, so for all the times we have had to overcome our greatest weaknesses just to survive here, kiss kiss, and konpai!

How lucky am I to know someone who it was so hard to say goodbye to.

The girls, Melanie, Liz, Beth, Tiffany, and me...the whole Joetsu crew got together for a Sayonara party at Funaie. Mel and Beth are returning to England and Scotland...I am going to miss them a lot. These are my girls. We had a sad discovery while taking this picture that through all the wild, and i am talking WILD, times we have had together, that this photo was the first one we had ever gotten together for, and this is the going away party..

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

maria and i : Maria is a dancer, come writer, come driving instructor, come brilliant superstar. Recently, she has supplied me with driving lessons..I am buying her car, which is a stick, and I am in need of knowledge on how to drive it..she is very patient with me...not only when I am behind the wheel, but she has been patient in Japanese class all year too carrying the weight of the questions as I show up without having studied all week. I never got to see her enough.

chris and satako: Satako is for real one of the coolest chicks around. She is dating Chris- who has spent the year being our local Joetsu Regional Advisor. He has valiantly let us grow and become part of the community without putting his head down and shaking it in shame too often. Satako will be going to England to work for a year, and with her luck she got her placement close to the uni chris will be taking grad classes at! Lovely people these two...lovely...

me and laura : Another gal I never saw enough of...Laura and I spent days on the slope together- but she being the expert boarder she was, we only would see eachother when she popped over to the bunny slopes to visit me.. She and I also got into a stir of trouble as we were left to entertain four men from Saitama recently at the Sayonara party in Kashiwazaki... Canada watch out, this giril is TROUBLE..babe my money is on day 10.

I couldn't decide which one was hotter.

dave and i

We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we all take a little bit of each other everywhere...some people come in and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never the same...

brooke and dave: Brooke just got great news, she just landed a job in Joetsu! She hadn't recontracted and decided around Golden Week that she was not ready to leave us! Smart girl. I am so happy for her. And then Dave, oh, Dave. I am going to miss that lovely Kiwi voice saying "Hey Carrie" as he answers my calls. We definitly are two completely different people, but the thing we share in common is a love for life and a love for others, so therefore when I get together with him it is a guaranteed good time; gonna miss those times.

me and zeshan : he's not leaving, but he is a great guy who puts up with me- I always love catching up with him when I see him.

liz ; not leaving, but damn this is hot! Spent the last few weekends chillin on the beach together.

mel looking equally as hot!

maria and jehanne so this is what hanging at a bar in japan looks like. Everyone grabs a seat on the floor, works the room, and digs into the eats with their chopsticks!

There was a special announcement..

liz and chuck: Chuck is totemo cool. Best damn ultimate player around.

dave and carolyn; obviously I missed something.
After a great party at the brand new Funaie, (and by the way I kind of already miss the old one- how are we going to meet people there now!?) We all headed to nijikai at PTA. PTA was packed with us singing....

beth and i singing Big Spender maybe? and she sang for me my ultimate Beth favorite- Garbage's Cherry Lips (Go Baby, go, go)

this girl has a voice i tell you- she's gonna be big one day..and i am not talking karaoke circuit..

tif and beth close

tif and beth

mel and tif . After all the singing we went to sanjikai (3rd party) at Nova, our local "club" and danced well until the morning, leaving only after the sun had come up.
Thank you for being a friend, travel round the world and back again, your heart is true you are a pal and a confident...(...if you don't know the tune you are missing out on a white haired classic..)

Dance Battle

We topped our weekend off by spending most of the day in the in Autobacs parking lot watching a Dance Battle. I met up with Liz and Tif and sat in the hot sun watching groups of people have a dance off and show off their skillz. And boy, did they had some moves!~ (we likened our situation to sitting in a AutoZone parking lot all day watching people break dance, that is what we did essentially) Then we headed to the beach , were I spent time watching Liz and Tif practice thier routine for the next dance off *they want to enter and they have some good moves up thier sleeves- I mean, for real, I have never seen jazz fingers like theirs!* That night there was a bustling crowd out for Takada Matsuri. We hit Takada Honcho, admiring the yukatas and watched the break dancers again. Rockin'!

break dancing

It is so going to ROCK!!

This is the layout plan of Fuji Rock! It looks awesome!! I am so ready to see live music. Living in Japan has had one huge change on my life, I no longer see live music at least once a week like I did in the States. I do go to whatever show is around and available, but living in the inaka (country) it is hard to come by, and going to Tokyo is expensive.... So I am going to hit one of Japan's biggest Rock Festivals...Fuji Rock...dates are 29, 30, and 31st of July! I am going with three of my best friends....it is going to kick ass!
I have been waiting years to see Beck!! He is my must see...

Finished!!

So I just realized I have taught my last class until September! ROCK ON!!!! Too bad I still have to report to work everyday....But now I can concentrate on my plans with Sara and Jan!!

15 DAYS AND COUNTING

My dear and lovely friend Jan is coming from the STATES to visit little ole me in Japan, she wrote me the greatest informative email telling me to get on the ball about what to do....to prepare for her...she even asked me what the deal is with the bathroom slippers!! funny....can't wait, our plans are jampacked while she is here, we are going to go mountain climbing...and hopefully climb Tateyama and Fuji- two of the three sacred mountains of Japan....

ちいさのパーテイーです (chisai no party desu) plus some other things

This is the interior of my apartment. Recently I had a few people over, kind of by accident, a small dinner for Mel and Tiff's birthday turned into a night of goodtimes and laugter as a random eclectic crowd gathered for some drinks. good times though.

Dave and Dave entertained themselves with whistle pops, sent to me by the lovely Emily Weiss. Same with my beautiful, colorful, light up my day windsock. They got some good tunes out of them, but my favorite part were the cat calls definitely.

On Sat there was a going away party in Kashiwazaki were I said goodbye to many ALTs from Niigata who are moving on with their lives. Monday was a holiday, so I drove my car up Myoko to watch the Sekiyama Matsuri.

The matsuri had samurai fighting and sumo and was really cool to watch. I immediatly got frustrated however when I got stuck behind a mikoshi (portable shrine) and got out to see if there was a way around it. When I got back into my car, it wouldn't start. I decided to hang out and watch some fighting, made a I swear impossible call to my rental company (of which I think we both understood 40% of the conversation) and waited to be saved. So I paced the streets surrounded by men drunk on sake and waited. I asked around for some jumper cables, meanwhile, an old man stopped me and asked me for my keys. I gave them to him and he got in my car and immediately started it. He then said "Japanese Car! Ok. OK! Good Car! Nihonjin OK!" My only response to the starting of the car was "hontoni arigatto gozaimashita, wakaranai~!" I then drove down the mountain to home.

sekiyama matsuri

I also was in my local newsflier recently. It talked about how the kids had fun in my ekaiwa.

where i have been...i better get crackin....

My good friend Tiffany had this on her blog,check it out at http://japanbystorm.blogspot.com I thought I would share my map of countries too... I better get traveling...only 17 countries, 7% of the world, and look at all those chunks of light blue, I need to hit the Southern Hemisphere....you better watch out.......I'm coming...

create your own visited countries map

create your own visited states map
The States I am doing a pretty good job on...(I did not include stopovers- or else you could throw Laos in there)

Open Mic at Memory

Everyone loves a litte live music... The Joetsu crew gets together about once a month to have an open mic. It brings out all the many talents of the people who surround me here. One of the major components of being able to live as a foreigner in Japan is having a creative personality. I love watching the peeps do thier thing; Chuck on bass, Brooke on banjo or fiddle, A japanese rock band, chris and alexi beating on some percussion, sometimes we have chris from niigata on trumpet, and the pleasing voices of beth and dave. an open mic is always a good time. even for those of us who don't have a special talent to show off- we are all music lovers aren't we?
the crowd

house band

tif and carolyn

beach party randomness

For mel's birthday (although she is not pictured) we hit the open mic at Memory and then headed to the beach for a big hip-hop party. We were the only gaijin (foreigners) there (of course) and we danced the night away next to the sea of japan.

the girls and i at hag

Getting Crazy and Busy in Joetsu

The last few weeks have been easy, laid back. I have taken a break from constant travel and stayed in the Joetsu area relaxing and working the scene here resting up and saving money for next month when Sara and Jan come to visit me!

My friends and I fill our time with an array of activities hitting the local scene (which surprising is growing here in the inaka (countryside)- I guess it is true the area I live in is on the outskirts of the third largest city in Niigata (really that is not saying much- it is kind of like a Saint Charles, MO kind of town..with no larger city to retreat to, and Japanese) The girls and I have been busy doing many things from making our appearance at the makeshift dance club in Nest to yelling our hearts out at Japanese Professional Wrestling.

Due to our area we tend to frequent Takada's Nakamachi.. It is the street in Takada, lots of the bars are hostess bars, you can go in and get chatted to by a purty lady, and as you can see from this sign- talking can be pleasurable...lots of the places along Nakamachi are yakuza ran. The yakuza is the Japanese mafia, and I guess that it really is rather seedy, seedy but safe.

On Friday (6-24) Mel, Liz, Beth, and I hit the town. We went to Club Nest. Nest is a coffee shop in Takada. It is really the only place you can get a cappuccino or espresso that is not from a push button machine (well at least that we have discovered). They also serve cocktails, but I go there for coffee. We have gotten to know the staff at Nest from our frequent meetings there, as it is a good place to meet up before a night out on Nakamachi. The staff at Nest presented us with a flyer about Club Nest and asked us (repeatedly) to come. We promised we would.

Nest is a swanky joint; sharp white furniture accented with stainless steel, a bar area, and big open windows in the front. They share their space with a record store that sells vinyl and cds. They always tend to have good tunes pumping through the system. The one drawback is Nest is usually a little bright with all the in your face white screaming at you (doesn't bother me all the much but it bugs some of my friends). But for Club Nest, they toned down the brightness and created a small space for dancing. We were warmly welcomed upon our entrances for Club Nest. It was ladies night, so that meant two drink tickets with the 500 Yen entrance fee. Rock on. That is basically two drinks for $5.00, which in this country is nearly unheard of!
The DJ was rockin’. He was spinning a varied mix from reggae, to hip-hop, to classic rock. Every thing with a beat that made you move. So one strong Moscow mule into the night, I found myself busting ill moves on a makeshift dance floor in my local coffee shop. The girls and I constantly laughing, stirring it up, dancing our asses off were quite a sight I’m sure.

Club Nest closed down a tad early (they were suppose to close at 11:30 pm, but we found ourselves leaving a little after 12) so we headed over to Nick’s and PTA to cap off our night.

It is interesting: I would say my friends and I have definitely become a fixture on our little scene here in Joetsu. We have our places in which we frequent (as have all the other ALTs before us I am sure)
PTA’s, the small karaoke bar ran by the friendliest “Master”, Nick’s Be Café, i.e. Nicks, more of a pub-like atmosphere with a big wooden bar and darts!, Funaie, the local izakaya with an English menu and cheesy potatoes to die for, Memory Live Bar, we have our monthly open-mic’s here and visit it ocassionaly for various live music…

and then me and my girls have added a few more into the standard mix as well…
We have Nova, the only dance club in town, Tiff and I scored life-time free passes by always sitting next to the owners on our trips for a nomihodai at Funaie,
Nest, the aforementioned swank coffee house,


Hag, a bar in which ShimuzuSensei from my school is the sempei of the master- it is a tiny bar with a friendly atmosphere and CHEAP drinks! Hag is sort of our little secret, it sets along the river and is like a little hole in the wall kind of joint, this is the place we go for a few drinks and a chat, just like the others who go there: a funny fact is that the name was actually suppose to be HUG, but do to a spelling error they wound up with HAG- an acronym a few friends use for Hot Asian Men- so from HUG to HAG... oh English.....

Sleeping Sheep, another bar that sits up above Nicks with chilled atmosphere and cool interior.
All these places have friendly staff that are welcoming to my friends and me, and if you are ever in the area are worth a visit for a taste of small Japan.

Saturday was a good day. While taking a stroll on the beach, Mel ran into a guy, Takahiro, whom I had met a few weeks earlier. So she called us telling us to come down to hang out. So, Liz and I met Mel and went to the beach. Takahiro and his friends were hanging out and had some jet skis. I was inappropriately dressed in a long white linen skirt, but got taken for a ride anyway. Takahiro and his friends were really sweet- pulling it all the way up so I would only have to wade through ankle deep water to get on the back of it. He took me on a great ride on the ocean, and went back to shore. As I began to hop off the back in maybe a couple of feet of water, being a gentleman, he called to his friend and once again he took me to only ankle deep water. How nice. Yet, myself being blessed with all the grace in the world, I found myself falling off drenching myself in the only ankle deep water. I am such a fool. Always! My white linen skirt drenched to the skin exposing my cute little black knickers…lovely…I actually didn’t care that much, me being near a body of water and attempting to go close to it, goes hand in hand with me eventually falling in it… So we hung out on the beach taking in the rays and chatting and then went back to get hot for the party that night….

Saturday night was a going away party for our friend jen. She is moving to Tokyo to be with her man Tak, they are great together. We started at a beer garden, then hit Nicks, and then went to Nova where Liz and I danced the night away.


Thursday was Tiff's birthday, so we did what any special gal would want to do on her birthday, we went to watch Professional Wrestling. The Japanese professional wrestlers are not that different from American.

Except for the presentation of flowers done by the women in kimonos, I have never seen that on WWF.
Our pro-wrestling experience was quite surreal really. Our seats happened to be right smack in the midst of a large group of mentally handicapped people. Their smiles were contagious as well as thier yelpings of "Ittai-sou!" (That looks like it hurt!) The japanese are quite shy and reserved a lot of the time, but once we started screaming, the crowd followed suit (although there were some hard-core fans who had been screaming the majority of the time. We also asked around to see how many people believe that the wrestling was for real. Every fan we met believed it was. (Although like us, most japanese people know that pro-wrestling is planned otherwise there would be a lot of broken necks) right?!

Engrish

ekaiwa

The Japanese Name Generator

My japanese name is 藤原 Fujiwara (wisteria fields) 恵美 Emi (blessed with beauty).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
The above link provides you with an electronic generated Japanese name. As you can see I did not edit the provided text for the link~ Beware...It is not all true and I have no idea what the technology behind it is, but you know, it is a bit fun. So try your hand and see what name you get, if you want you can come back and tell me!