Another week down

Last Saturday (the 30th) I went to Atsuko's house for dinner. Chinatsu came and made gyoza again. They told me that since they know I like gyoza and that they are hard to find in NZ (whereas wontons are much easier to find in NZ than in Japan) they are making sure to feed me lots of gyoza before I leave. I got to help fold them again. The first few I made were very good and curved properly, but after that my gyoza got progressively worse. I don't know why. Chinatsu made a couple of other Chinese dishes. The Japanese people present were saying 'Um, this tastes weird . . .' but I was so happy. It tasted like proper Chinese food! I guess the Chinese food available in NZ is a lot closer in taste to proper Chinese food than the stuff available in Japan. I knew that NZ and Japanese Chinese food tasted different, but I had been wondering which was closer to the original. Now I know.

On Sunday the 1st I took the train into Akita City to go see the Charity Gaijin Sumo event. Many male teachers of English (and one Japanese man) dressed up in mawashi (those little nappy things) and had a sumo tournament to raise money to fund a school in Nepal and to buy textbooks for students in India. The competitors all did very well considering that they aren't actually sumo wrestlers. Being men, they went all-out and ended up injuring each other. There were a few prides hurt, a few very exciting matches, and the man who won was the one who most deserved to win (because he was not thought very highly of by the other competitors the first year he entered as he is not a sporty person, but he really loves sumo so he tried hard). It was a nice day.

On Monday evening I went to my goodbye party with the Yosakoi team. We had dinner in a meeting hall in Kisakata. I ate a raw oyster because they are a specialty of Kisakata and I thought I ought to eat raw oyster at least once before I leave. It was really gross. We pushed a table back and danced yosakoi dances on the tatami matting. They made me do an improptu speech in Japanese, which came out in colloquial Japanese because I can't do polite speech-type Japanese without preparing for it first. They gave me this year's uniform as a present and also a huge photo of our team that was taken in Sendai last year. Then everyone wanted to take pictures of me with their cellphones and we said goodbye. Some of us went to karaoke after the party. We didn't finish until after midnight, so even though I did not drink any alcohol, I felt rather awful the next day at work.

On Friday morning I bought my plane ticket back to Wellington. I will leave Narita on the 11th of August and get into Wellington on the 12th. That's so soon!

That afternoon Atsuko drove me and three boxes of my stuff to the post office so I could send them back to NZ. There is no way I could have carried them all the way to the post office by myself. After that we went up to the Nikaho Plateau to buy fresh ice cream at the dairy farm that is up there. It was really delicious. Then we went for a drive and I got home in time to get on Skype and talk to my family.

Yesterday I was finally able to go with my Eikaiwa (English class) students to Nakajimadai. It is a hiking track through the forest on the slopes of Mt. Chokai. We spent several hours walking along board walkways, climbing over rocks, crossing rope bridges, looking at old twisted trees and drinking water out of pools that were filled with fresh water that had just come out of the ground. I discovered that I am not as much of a city girl as I thought. I was surprised when I was offered a cup to drink water out of a pool. I had already drunk some water - using my hand. Apparently that's weird, and only Ei-san had done likewise. Everyone else used a cup. Also, on the way back to the carpark Ei-san spotted a mulberry tree. I said "Ooh, mulberies!" and started eating them right off the tree. One of the people I was hiking with and a couple of random people who came to see what we were eating actually didn't know which berries to pick. "Do I eat the red ones or the black ones?" It was when I found myself surprised that anyone would have to ask that question that I realised that I must have picked up a thing or two from my father after all.

After we had finished hiking the ladies took me to a souvenir shop in Kisakata so I could pick out a gift for them to buy me. They told me I could choose anything up to 10,000 yen in value. I chose a kabazaiku letter box. Kabazaiku is a specialty craft of Akita Prefecture, mainly done in the area of Kakunodate, which is made of cherry bark. The Kabazaiku, not the town. The box was only 6,000 yen so they also bought me a kabazaiku tea leaf canister that has a fuki design on it. Fuki is called butterbur in English, and is the prefectural plant. It is more stuff to send back, but I like Kabazaiku, so I am happy.