HOLY CRAP.
Two whole posts in a single week!
LOOK AT THAT.

How many people want to bet that this never happens again?


Anyway.

Let's talk about Hiroshima.
As I mentioned months ago, I accepted a position at a junior/senior high school on the west side of Hiroshima City. It's a really nice school, though the current class of 8th graders makes me want to rub my face against a cheese grater on a regular basis. My supervisor seems to feel the same way. The new 7th grade class is full of awesome kids, and I've heard great things about the other four grades, though I do not teach them. I am having a blast.


Since getting here, my husband and I have made an effort to get more acquainted with Hiroshima City in general. Gifu was not nearly as big of a city, and it cost nearly twice as much to get down to Nagoya City so we never really explored as much as we probably should have.

We've been here for almost sixth months. In the past six months we've explored our little neighborhood, and have explored a small chunk of downtown. We've also been to Miyajima twice, but we still have a lot more to go. I have an unprecedented three two-day weekends this month.

Three.

I am estatic.
We're going to try to rent a car next weekend (the 16th and 17th) and drive out to Okayama to visit the Bizen Osafune Sword Museum and Token Village.
Because they have a scale model of the Lance of Longinus from Neo Genesis Evangelion.
Monday the 17th (a national holiday) is the last day, so we have to go.
I have friends who will stop talking to me if we don't go.

Ahem.
BACK ON TOPIC WE GO.

In May, Japan had it's great Golden Week, which is three days in a row of national holidays at beginning of May, plus a national holiday on April 29th. Many companies and schools give the entire period from the 29th to May 5th off, making it one of the busiest times of the year to travel.

But that's not the point.

The point is, YAY NO WORK.

The first day, we hung out at the Flower Festival down at the Peace Park. Wasn't sure what to expect, but it wasn't too bad. Ran into my school's baton club after they finished marching in the parade and had a lot of giggles from the girls about my being married. Didn't stay too long, but have plans to go again next year.

The second day, we headed over to Hiroshima Castle for the first time.
Now, I love castles.
I mean, love castles.
I've been to: Matsumoto, Ueda ruins, Yatsushiro Ruins, Kumamoto, Shimabara, Hirado, Gifu, Kano ruins, Gujo Hachiman, Ogaki, Ogura ruins, Nagoya, Osaka, Nijo, and Inuyama. I guess you can even include the Imperial Palace in Kyoto.
We have plans to get to Himeji (even if it will still be under restoration) while we are living in Hiroshima. And any other castle or castle ruins I can find in the neighboring prefectures.

Even if it is a rebuilt replica, if it's a castle, I want to go.
I just love walking around the grounds. I love the gardening, and I love the architecture.
The grounds around Hiroshima Castle and the moat are just lovely for a picnic, or for a quiet day in the shade with a good book. There's even a jogging course around the moat and through the adjoining park.

For only being there a few hours, I took a metric ton of photos.
I nearly maxed out my 4GB SD card. With only JPEGs. Go me.

Here are some of the best, including two I messed around with in HDR software:






















Now, as this is a full two-day weekend, I will hopefully have time to go through my photos from the last day of Golden Week and have a post of that up sometime Saturday or Sunday. When I'm not so tipsy. Have I mentioned that I've had two Suntory Strong Zero grape chu-hi? Yeah. I'm a bit tipsy.

Golden Week's over, and I spent most of the week being lazy.
Saturday was spent in my pajamas.
Sunday hubby and I met up with a friend who had come home from his job in Tochigi for karaoke and drinks.
Monday was karaoke-overload-recovery day.
Tuesday was a trip to Inuyama (more on that later down the page!).
Wednesday was laziness in pajamas again.


Overall, a nice, relaxing vacation. I only wish it had lasted longer.


I said that if we'd go anywhere (i.e. Inuyama) I'd post any pictures I'd take.
Well, Golden Week is over but that doesn't mean I can't spend my hour before my night class starts uploading pictures for your viewing pleasure!


Inuyama Castle is considered one of the oldest remaining castles in Japan. Wikipedia says there are 12 that remain from before the Edo period, but the four most famous are Himeji, Matsumoto, Hikone and Inuyama. Out of these four, I had only been to Matsumoto Castle several times. You can find pictures browsing around my deviantArt account.

Inyuyama Castle is only a half hour from the nearest Meitetsu train station near my apartment. I've been in Gifu for almost two and a half years and I had yet to go, so I made it clear to my husband that we were going come rain or shine.

Well, it rained. Right when we got out of the station in Inuyama City.
And I forgot an umbrella.
But, being the crazy American tourists we are, we braved the 20 minute walk up to the castle without an umbrella!

Got there and being Golden Week there were more tourists than usual out on a rainy day. The walk up to the castle from Inuyama Station is nice because there's a whole area of old-style shops and galleries. I wish I had stopped to take pictures, but I wanted to get to the castle before it started pouring. There are also several oddly tall buildings along the walk. These hold the mikoshi for the Inuyama Matsuri and Inuyama Castle Matsuri that are held every spring in the beginning of April. Inuyama's mikoshi are quite taller than the normal mikoshi found at festival, and I believe are on wheels. I haven't actually seen them, so I'm not sure.


By the time we got to the castle it was starting to rain pretty good, so everyone was trying to get into the castle at the same time. Being an original castle with original flooring, one has to take off their shoes and put them in a plastic bag before entering.
This makes it quite dangerous to walk around the castle. The reason being, the stairs are insanely steep. To put it simply, castle builders made the staircases steep with narrow steps to keep invaders from rapidly climbing up the floors in the case they were invaded. I still wonder how samurai got around the castle in full armor during battle. There is no safe way to run up and down those stairs.

I will stop talking now and just let you guys look at the few pictures I have. All of these can be seen in larger on my deviantArt site which is linked up top. You can also download the full resolution photo from dA, but they aren't big enough to be wallpapers. If you would like a wallpaper from any photos you see on deviantArt, let me know and I'll see if I still have the original on file somewhere.

As I mentioned in my post back in January, Gifu houses one of the oldest sakura cherry trees in Japan, 薄墨桜 (Usuzumi-zakura). Usuzumi-zakura is supposedly 1500 years old, only be upstaged by Jindai-zakura in Yamanashi Prefecture which is about 2000 years old. According to legend, it was planted in 467 during the reign of Emperor Yuryaku who was the 21st emperor of Japan. There is some speculation on this, as some websites I've found on it say the year 487.

This particular type of sakura is known for it's pale pink petals that fade to white as they reach full bloom, then fade to a light gray as they fall. The name usuzumi-zakura literally translates to "light Chinese ink cherry tree". This name was given due to the fact that the petals do turn a light gray that is very similar to watered down traditional Chinese ink used in calligraphy and painting.


The tree itself is huge compared to the average size of a sakura tree. According to the official website (Japanese only), it is 16.3m (about 53.5ft) tall and 9.91m (about 32.5ft) around it's trunk. The thing is absolutely massive.

Instead of me just typing away about it, how about some pictures to look at?
You can click on them to see them bigger.
Later, once I go through all that I took, I will upload more to my deviantArt site, which is linked to the "Photo" button up top of this blog.

The post date for my last entry tells me it's been almost a month since my last post.
And I had promised a post the week after my last one!


All I can say is:
I'm sorry for the wait.

What exactly kept me from posting a new entry?
Well, to put it bluntly, life happened.
The ups and downs that come with life happened to be mostly downs last month, and kept me far away from the computer.


However I am back, and bringing you two new posts today! This post will be a quick recap of several events that have happened in the last month, and the next will be a list of various online resources useful when learning Japanese. Not specifically sites to learn Japanese from, but sites that are good to use as supplements to your learning.


Now, on to the main event! Photos and stories galore!
Those with slow internet connections may want to go get a cup of coffee or go file their taxes while all the photos load up.



First things first, I sadly do not have any awesome pictures of my awesome fiber optic internet line getting installed. The landlord refused permission to have NTT install the line through the wall, so we had to have it brought in through our window. Sadly, it wasn't as awesome of an install as I thought it would be. However, it is relatively faster than my last connection, which is awesome. No lag time in World of Warcraft in the mornings!



In the place of fiber optic installation pictures, I will add to the thousands of photos online of a very peculiar spring festival.

Every March the city of Komaki in Aichi Prefecture, the neighboring prefecture of Gifu who's capital is Nagoya, has a set of shrines that put on a harvest/fertility festival, known as a hounensai (豊年際). These shrines are Oogata Shrine (大縣神社) and Tagata Shrine (田縣神社). Tagata Shrine always has their festival on the 15th, while Oogata Shrine has theirs on the previous Sunday. Oogata Shrine's festival is relatively small and unknown, even though it occurs on a weekend. An image search on Google only brings up 149 hits, very few of which are actually of the shrine. Tagata Shrine, however, brings up 2650 hits. Nearly every single hit is an image of the festival.

I will warn you now. If you are at your place of work, or have young children/immature adults around you, please do not Google search this festival, nor scroll down past here.


This year the two festivals ran together, which I did not know, so I missed out on Oogata Shrine's festival. I dragged my husband to Tagata Shrine early in the morning, hoping to miss the crowd. However, I was dead wrong in my timing.


At only 10am, nearly 3 hours before the actual main events of the festival would start, the temple was already packed.
From the first glance, this looked like any other shrine you'd see in Japan. Typical styled shrine buildings, large stone torii out front, gardens everywhere.
The always-a-must food booths for festivals were also everywhere you looked. We made sure to pick up some yummy Hida Beef ka-bobs, and chocolate-filled taiyaki.



It wasn't until you got further into the shrine grounds, past the taiko drummers, that you notice this is not your typical shrine.
Every where you look are rocks that are phallic shaped. Either naturally shaped or carved by hand, every corner hides several small phalluses. Next thing you know, there are vendor tables selling phallic-shaped candies, ashtrays, incense burners and keychains.




They had phallic candy in several flavors
As well as many different phallic-shaped objects for gifts to take home with you.




As my husband described it, it seemed we had walked into the world's largest sausage fest. But what was the point of all of these phalluses?
Turns out, the deity of Tagata Shrine is a female harvest and fertility deity, and all of the phallic stones, carvings, candy, etc. were gifts and offerings to the deity in hopes for a bountiful harvest and healthy children. Oogata Shrine, the one we didn't get two, houses a male harvest and fertility deity and gets gifts and offerings of female genitalia.



Around 2pm, a parade from the nearby Kumanosha Shrine (熊野社) starts that brings three mikoshi floats to the main shrine of Tagata Shrine. One is an offering float, one is the male deity from Oogata Shrine, and one...I'm not sure what it is, to be honest with you. The offering float contains a newly-carved phallus, made from a single cypress tree. The thing is huge, and sticks out from both sides. There were two or three teams of men, all aged 42 (an unlucky age for men despite being the answer to the ultimate question), who take turns carrying the offering.







The other two floats are a red float, that looks much like a shrine itself, and a elaborate float. The red float, pictured on the left here, carries a statue of Takeinadene-no-mikoto, the deity of Oogata Shrine. Legend has it he was a warrior who married a girl from the village where Komaki now stands. The girl is the deity enshrined in Tagata Shrine, Tamahime-no-mikoto. Sadly, I did not get a picture of the figure inside of this, as much as I wanted to.
The little torii gate in front of the float did make me giggle, though. The Japanese can be very detailed with these things.






The last float, the really elaborate one held this guy:
No clue who he is. Neither the English pamphlet that I bought for 100 yen nor the informational website I found mentions it. My guess is either it's a second image of Takeinadene-no-mikoto, or the deity of Kumanosha Shrine. If anyone can find any information, I'd love to know!







For all three of these floats, as well as several groups of shinto priests and a group of 36-year-old women holding freshly-carved wooden phalluses (36 is unlucky for women), it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to make the 1.5 kilometer walk between shrines.
Once the mikoshi have made it to Tagata Shrine, the offering mikoshi is brought inside the main shrine, where it will rest for a year until the next hounensai brings a new offering.
Around 4pm there is a mochinage, or rice cake-throwing, where a bunch of the priests and special guests lob lucky rice cakes at the crowd. This is QUITE dangerous, and several times they warned that the elderly, pregnant women, people with kids, and people with eyeglasses should refrain from joining in as the shrine is not responsible for any injuries received while trying to catch a rice cake.

Overall, it was a unique experience, and both my husband and I were glad we went. The festival has gained a lot of popularity with foreign tourists, and a good 30% of the visitors to the festival were not of Japanese decent. There was also a random Japanese man dressed up in full cowboy gear, except for chaps. He also had a guitar case with him, which prompted my husband and I to stay far away from him, in case the guitar case held a machine gun, like the movie Desperato.

If anyone ever comes visit the Nagoya area in March, I completely suggest this festival. I think it's about 700 yen from Nagoya's Meitetsu train station to Tagata Shrine, which makes it a very affordable day trip.
Next year, my husband and I will definitely make plans to go to Oogata Shrine's festival, so I hope this blog sticks around so I have somewhere to post pictures!


Now, there is still one more thing to talk about.
However, I believe this post is long enough, so I will stop here and start a new one. So I guess you guys are lucky and get three posts today!

Almost a month after the move, and I'm still without internet in the new apartment. NTT guys came, landlord said they can't install fiber optic in the walls, so we're bringing it in through the window. You would think that because they don't have to do much installation compared to bringing it up through the walls, that we could get internet quickly. Nope. We don't get the line installed until the 21st. And that will be a fun day as I possibly have classes that afternoon (trial classes that if no one signs up for I don't have to go to!) and the installers might have to deal with my English-only husband. This shall be interesting if I have to go to class and leave him to the insstallers.


And a quick self-promotion (because I just can't help myself), I signed up for a "Dream Photo Shoot" contest. I got the link from The Daily Coyote earlier today and had to sign up. I love photography and would really like to hone my skills one day instead of just taking wannabe photos with a floor model point-and-shoot I picked up cheap at Sears last summer.
Click the badge below and read my dream. And if you are inclined to do so, a vote would be very much appreciated!






Okay, back to work.

Last week I was scheduled to put up a blog on Tuesday, but due to a teacher coming down sick suddenly, I had to take over classes and couldn't get into the office. So you guys get a blog today instead! I was hoping to have more time this month to get in some blogging time, but with the end of the school year, prep for the new school year, TONS of trial lessons, trial students, and starting private lessons for two students on top of my regular classes, I'm pretty much pushed to the limit.

Still, in the hour and a half I have to type right now, I'll try to get in some info about Learn Japanese Free.
While I would say this is a good resource for learning Japanese, I would not make this your main source of information.
It is very simply set up, and easy to navigate. Each topic having it's own link to it's own page. This is the main reason why I say it's a good resource to find information easily.
However, on the very first lesson, Hiragana, there is a major mistake.

Obviously, as there is no explanation of stroke order, this site is designed to help you learn to read and speak Japanese, not write. While the charts of hiragana themselves have no mistakes, and actually cover all of the combinations and diacritical marks making it a wonderful chart to study from, one of their explanations halfway down the page is wrong.
Under the first hiragana chart they list two exceptions to the pronuncation rules they mentioned on the top of the page: one for the subject marker は(ha) and one for the directional marker へ(he). The page has the explanation of " は[ha] is pronounced "wa" when it is immediately follows the subject. It is usually only pronounced "ha" when it is a part of a word" which is correct, but the explantion of へ(he) carries the wrong hiragana.
The website has "ひ [he] is pronounced "e" when it immediately follows a place or direction. Both of these are very simple to detect" as the explanation, but the character listed is ひ(hi) not へ(he). Mixing up ひ and へ is a very common mistake, mainly because how they are pronounced compared to the common romaji reading of both. ひ is pronounced as the English pronoun "he" but is written as "hi" in romaji. へ is prounounced very closely to "hay" but is written as "he" in romaji. Confusing, eh?

The first few lessons of introductions, greetings and intro vocabulary are very, very sparse without much explanation of usage other than definition. While not bad, the last of example sentances or situations to use the vocabulary may be confusing at first. Lesson 4 (vocabulary) includes a link to a second vocabulary lesson. Once again, a lot of useful vocabulary but no explanation, despite having two different words for "this". They also leave out some related vocabulary that is usually taught all at once in most classrooms.

Lesson 5, grammar, is the first page with any real explanations. The page introduced the word order for Japanese sentences, but concentrates more on sentence particles. The main page states that this is a page of minimal grammar points, and boy were they not kidding. While the explanations are easy to understand, there's not a lot said. It's about as minimalistic of an explanation as you can get for the subject markers. If you don't know much about English grammar terminology (like what direct and indirect objects are), you'll be pretty confused.

After this lesson, the order that the beginner lessons continue in doesn't make much sense to me. Instead of trying to tie the learned vocabulary and grammar together with useful phrases (lesson 7), they introduce 16 kanji characters first. Personally, I would have put this AFTER basic grammar, sentence structure, and example sentences have been thoroughly covered and explained. Lessons 8, 9 and 10 give pretty good practice dialogues, except that much of the vocabulary used in the dialogues have not been covered anywhere in the previous lessons. If you have a dictionary on hand this won't be a problem, but for those without, you're on your own for figuring out which word in the Japanese sentence corresponds with the English translation.


Past lesson 10 starts the "intermediate" Japanese lessons, which strangely start with "Basic Japanese Sounds". I don't know about you, but if the title of the lesson contains "basic" it should be under the "basic lessons" section, not intermediate. However, this is by far the best lesson yet. This should have been Lesson 3 right after hiragana and katakana. How you can get this far into teaching Japanese online WITHOUT explaning pronuncation thoroughly is beyond me. If you chose to use this website as a Japanese resource, PLEASE look at Lesson 1 under "Intermediate" before you go to any of the grammar or vocabulary pages. Otherwise you'll get into bad habits of pronouncing things with English pronuncation rather than Japanese. Please, do yourself a favor and learn pronuncation rules before you learn vocabulary. It'll make it so much easier and make you look less like an idiot when you actually try to converse in Japanese for the first time. And just so you know, EVERYONE looks like an idiot the first time they speak Japanese. Learn to laugh at yourself and your mistakes, and move on. I can't begin to tell you how embarrassing it was to get to Japan my first time and realize how horribly my pronuncation was when I first tried to converse.


The rest of the lessons in "intermediate" are things I would consider basic as a teacher. Lesson 2
FINALLY gives detailed explanations of particles, along with examples! It also includes several links to pages detailing Japanese adjectives, pronouns, basic verb conjucations (though this could be more detailed), differences between the verbs "aru" and "iru", the copula "desu", and tenses/politeness forms. The numbers lesson has a few instances where they have the reading for "10" as "jo/joo/jooo" instead of "ju", but is a good start to learning numbers.
Other lessons finally introduce ways to address others, find out names, and also have several links to related topics that may come in handy if dining/shopping in Japan or in Japan on business. Many of the lessons include handy phrases and words you hear often in everyday Japanese conversations.

Overall, a pretty decent basic page. However, there are several mistakes in both the English and in the Japanese throughout the page, so be careful. Out of all the lessons, those in the "intermediate" section are by far the most useful. They offer more detailed information, examples, and cover much more grammar and vocabulary than the "basic" lessons. I wouldn't even consider the basic lessons a "toe in the water" for those wanting to learn Japanese. Other than the hiragana and katakana charts, one could possibly skip over them all and move right into the intermediate lessons, granted they have other sources to learn from as well.

The best pages, by far, of the whole site are the last three links on the page to sites for Japanese songs, downloads (Japanese word processing software and games), and Japanese newspaper sites. If you are really interested in learning more about Japan and Japanese, I totally and completely suggest the four links found here for Japanese newspapers in both English and Japanese. Best way to get an eye into Japan's world from inside Japan from your own home. Many of the newspapers' English sites offer articles written by foreigners in Japan, usually detailing little odd bits of Japanese culture and life that many Japanese themselves don't think twice about.



And while I'd love to write more, especially in detail for the later "intermediate" lessons, I need to run to the grocery store to get dinner stuff before heading to my afternoon classes.
Look for a new blog sometime during the middle of next week!