Off to the Philippines!

Nana and I are off to the Philippines tomorrow. Stop one is Manila, where in addition to sightseeing we'll be visiting Beia (a friend from Edinburgh) and partaking in some family celebrations she's graciously invited us to. Stop two is Puerto Princesa, on the island of Palawan, where we'll be hanging out by the pool, lounging on the beach, and maybe snorkling and sailing a bit.

It'll be a different kind of trip for us--several days in a place with only one museum! Still taking bets on whether we actually stick to our guns and chill out a bit, or succumb to the ever-present temptation to schlep around looking for blog fodder.

Anyway, we'll probably be out of touch for most of next week, though we may try to get one or two quick posts up while we're away.

Pan-Asian Reunion

Back when we were in Seoul, Justin and I met up twice with our college friend Mark (we were all band geeks together). Mark, who now resides in NYC, came back to Korea again for a few weeks lately and since Fukuoka is so close to Busan, decided to give Japan a whirl. He came over on the Beetle ferry and stayed with us for a couple nights. You can read his coverage (with some really gorgeous photographs) at his blog, Goes To Twelve. If you want to stay over here, you'll have to put up with this photo I stole from his Facebook page:

In Korea, Mark was our only visitor. We had four visitors in Scotland (Justin's parents and Justin's sister, and another band friend, and we visited a friend from high school). Here in Japan, we've already had Korean coworkers, an Edinburgh buddy, my dad, and Mark, so it's definitely trending up. We love company, so if you're on this side of the ocean, give us a ring!

Completely unrelated fact I just learned from my students: the Japanese phrase for "combover" is "bar code hair." I know that has nothing to do with this post, but I really wanted to share it.

Ninja Spider

Last Saturday, while cleaning out our closet for items to donate to the Spring Festival flea market, I opened a box to discover Ninja Spider and promptly had six kinds of heart attack. Why? Firstly, Ninja Spider was huge. The picture below shows him next to our air conditioner. The gray square is maybe between a quarter and a half dollar in size. In my rough estimation, this makes Ninja Spider about seven feet across.

Second, Ninja Spider was FAST. Lightning fast for his size, displaying a wanton disregard for the laws of physics, which, come on, people, are there FOR A REASON. He was the freaking LaMarr Woodley of spiders.

We got out the vacuum, because my preferred tactic for eliminating creepy-crawly things involves me being about six feet away. I discovered something about my husband the day Ninja Spider invaded our home: Justin hates spiders almost as much as I do. It is very difficult to kill a spider when both of you want to be six feet away from it.

In any case, the vacuum was a strategic error. Our vacuum does not have the kind of suction it takes to pick up Ninja Spider, who probably weighs in around fourteen pounds, and also was way too unwieldy to follow him as he zipped around the closet, clearly laughing at us in spider language.

And then he vanished.

I took everything out of that half of the closet. Linens, boxes, you name it. I took them out and shook them out, and no spider to be found. You know the old "What's worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm." joke? Well, I've got the new version. What's worse than finding a two-inch spider in your house? Losing it again.

We told ourselves he'd gone out whatever fiendish way he came in, but clearly he was just lulling us into a false sense of security. Two nights ago he came back, in a different room, just to prove that he could. Justin went at him with a flip-flop; he darted behind the AC unit. We tried everything to get him out, including the blow dryer, to no avail. You could hear him making raspberries at us and lighting up a little spider-size cigar.

Fine, we said. You may have strength and speed on your side, and probably brains too. But Justin and I are teachers. We have patience. And thus the siege began.

It was not too long before Ninja Spider got cocky. He came out again, nonchalantly posing for the above photograph, which he clearly thought would become a family heirloom in the same way Roman families might have kept profile stone carvings of Attila the Hun. Justin went at him again, this time abandoning the flip-flop for a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. As a read, he found it disappointing. As an arachnicide, it also failed to deliver. Ninja Spider was off like a shot, but we were in hot pursuit.

For a dark moment, we lost him. Then, there he was, in the upper corner of the tatami room next to the porch door. To show respect for our worthy foe, we opened the door a crack, enough for him to get away should he desire. But Ninja Spider's bushido warrior code must have called on him to die honorably in battle, and he refused to retreat.

Thus it was there, in the corner, near the bamboo panda wall scroll and above the breadmaker, that Ninja Spider met his Commodore Perry, in the form of me and Justin's hardback copy of Sebastian Junger's War.

Ninja Spider, you were a mighty foe. Here's hoping you do not have forty-seven spider retainers to come after us to avenge you. Because after the first three show up, I'm probably moving.

Fukuoka International School Spring Festival: Saturday, April 23, 11:00-15:00

This post has two audiences: Fukuokaites (Fukuokans? Fukuokabridgians?) and the folks back home.

For Fukuokizens: Come to the Fukuoka International School Spring Festival! This Saturday, the FIS community will play host to folks from all around, with a fiesta featuring home-made carnival games, eclectic performances, a raffle, and even a flea market. Ten percent of the proceeds from the festival, plus all the proceeds from the flea market, will be donated to relief efforts for victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami.

For folks back home: What do you think is the best way to attach a thumbtack to a little rubber dart? So that, when shot from a toy dart gun, the dart still flies straight-ish, but can pop a balloon? My current plan involves a hot glue gun . . .

Anyway, the festival promises to be tons of fun, even if the added burden of preparations have made life at FIS a bit hectic.

I think I'm learning Japanese, I think I'm learning Japanese, I really think so

It's surprising how little of the local language you learn when you work in English all day. The Korean we learned was purely functional: deciphering menus, ordering food, directing taxi drivers. Our Japanese has been going that way, too. You learn what you use, and you lose what you don't--and up to this point, we really haven't had many opportunities to practice anything but the most basic Japanese.

That's why Nana and I have signed up for some weekly lessons at a local language school here in Fukuoka. We're hoping the shame of coming to class without having done the homework (teachers seem to be more afraid of this than students) will get our butts in gear. Then in August, if all goes well, we'll take a couple week-long intensive courses between the time we get back to Japan and the time school starts up again.

With luck, this will mean we don't go through our second year in Japan as haplessly as we went through our second year in Korea. We'll see!

Hanami time

Hanami means "flower viewing," and in Japan it refers to the springtime tradition of going out to see the cherry blossoms. This is an old tradition, perhaps nearly 1,500 years old (medieval), but it wasn't always for cherry blossoms: the earliest parties were for ume, or plum blossoms, which, fittingly, bloom earlier in the season.

How does one "hanami?" By picnicking under the trees, usually on bright tarps, often with a great deal of liquid encouragement.

No, we hadn't been drinking for this picture. Justin and I can make fools of ourselves with no outside help whatsoever.

Our first hanami was at Ohori Park. This was the first time in Japan I'd actually seen someone falling down drunk in broad daylight. (The same thing happened in Scotland within approximately forty minutes of the plane touching down). Some parts of the park looked like a college campus, like my old residential college used to look on TDDDTD Day (Timothy Dwight Drunk During The Day Day), except with a much higher proportion of people over 22.

There is, according to Wikipedia, a Japanese proverb poking fun at people who focus on the drinking and food: hana yori dango, "dumplings rather than flowers." This reminds me of a Korean TV soap called "Boys over Flowers," which should really be about a hanami with high school girls. (What is it actually about? Justin and I never figured that out, except that it has an incredible scene we watched during Korean class in which a male protagonist, about to marry the wrong woman, can't come up with a better way to stop the ceremony than to brace his hand on the coffee table, turn somberly to the best man, and say, "Break my arm." Apparently, in Korea, this was not meant to be comedy.)

This is not to say that people drink at every hanami, or that the only point of hanamis is drinking. This one was after five o'clock on a Saturday, when, as Billy Joel can tell you, the regular crowd has a tendency to shuffle in. Our second hanami, at Nishikoen (Nishi Park), was at midday on a Sunday and was, in many parts of the park, a family affair. It was a popular chance for mothers and children to take pictures dressed up in kimono. I didn't see fathers in traditional dress, a fact which causes the material cultures historian in me to want to blurt out obnoxious theoretical pontifications on gender. Feel free to smack me if I do. If you're too far away, send an email, and I'll do it myself.

So. Nishikoen. Pretty!


Manly!
Slightly out of focus!

One of my favorite parts of hanami was watching the petals falling in the air, the effect we saw recreated on stage when we went to watch geisha dance. It's like watching fat snowflakes, but more so, since the sun can be out, lighting the petals beautifully, and you're not freezing your booty off. The Japanese also seem to enjoy this aspect, but in a bit more of a melancholy way, using the blossoms and petals as a symbol of transience. Cherry blossoms, although beautiful, rarely last long. If the weather is perfect, they last a few weeks.

A senior student of mine wrote a research paper on kamikazis and cited a haiku which went something like "Falling cherry blossoms/ The remaining cherry blossoms will soon be /Falling cherry blossoms." It captures the idea of young men dying in battle and new young men going off to the front - a Japanese "Where have all the flowers gone?/Long time passing."

Despite these somber overtones, hanami are generally festive occasions. That's been a problem this year, as Japan continues to confront the tsunami and earthquake devastation up north. Those of us in less-affected or unaffected areas worry that it would be in poor taste to picnic under trees while other people have lost so much. The crowds this year are apparently much lower than normal as, according to this BBC article, many hanamis have been cancelled. While all of us want to be respectful, the article offers two perspectives from up north encouraging us to proceed. One man says, "We've lost everything here. We want other people to remind us what normal life is like." A man named Kosuke Kuji, who owns a sake brewery which survived the earthquake, has suffered during what is typically a boom season because cancelled hanamis mean less drinking. (I looked up his brewery. It's Nanbu Bijin. They apparently even have some US distribution, so maybe keep an eye out for their product.)

Boy, where was I when they handed out those books with all the answers in them - you know, the one you get when you become a grown-up?

Taiwan: Beef Noodles & Night Markets

Taiwan is known for good, cheap food. It's Chinese culture: at mealtimes, you tend to find yourself holed up in a dingy-looking place like this--

. . . eating food that looks like this--

. . . that somehow, nine times out of ten, manages to be totally awesome.

Night markets are the best place to go for cheap street food. Like the hawker stalls in Singapore, night markets can be found all over Taiwan.

Even with Nana's Chinese, we spent a lot of time playing menu roulette, though generally we were able to pick out a couple different kinds of meat, and I made darn sure I learned the characters for "beef noodles" by the end of the trip.

Here are a few of the culinary highlights of our trip (excepting an excellent dinner on our last night with Edinburgh pal Mei--none of the photos of that meal came out).

These are two variations on the ultimate local dish: Taiwanese beef noodles. Somewhere between a soup and a stew, with marinated beef. I'm pretty sure I could eat this every day for a month and not get tired of it.

We also had the Taiwanese take on teppanyaki--a Japanese dish of fried meat and veggies, similar to what you'd get at a Benihana in the US. (Remember, Taiwan was under Japanese rule for half a century--the Japanese influence pops up in all kinds of unexpected places.)

In Taiwan, though, you can get lamb teppanyaki, which I don't think is as common in Japan.

Lamb seems to have been lost in the Americanization of Chinese cooking, but seems to be pretty popular among Chinese people throughout Asia. Too bad--Chinese lamb dishes are pretty great.

The one below, an oyster omelette, was a little disappointing. It's supposed to be a Taipei specialty, but ours was kind of bland and gooey. Maybe we just didn't get a good one!

On the whole, though, we spent most of our time snacking, rather than eating proper meals. Luckily, Taiwan is a great place to snack.

This place sold some incredible green-onion pancakes.

They were somewhere between latke and Indian paratha bread--kind of flaky, with a lot of onion.

This fellow sold us fried rice dough wrapped in . . . rice dough.

And these guys had blood sausage--one of my favorites!

It's the black one in the middle.

Finally, my undoing--the Moriarty to my arterial Holmes, if you will--fruit ice.

That's a mound of shaved ice, topped with fresh fruit and drizzled with fruit sauce and condensed milk. They have this in Japan and Korea, but I'd never tried it before Taiwan. I guess I always thought the ice would be the texture of a snow cone, but it's not--it's like frozen air. Creamy, delicious air.

The only problem? Some places seem a little overzealous about the whole "tomatoes are fruit" thing.

Tomatoes for dessert? Seriously!