A Homecoming of Sorts

Nine months ago I left, and now I'm back again. Last time we kicked it in rainy Kanazawa, but this time it's mountainous Aizu. About three hours north of Tokyo by train, Aizu is one of the most accommodating and friendliest places I've ever been. I've already made so many friends and invaluable social connections that it blows my mind. Not just that, but I've already been to a Japanese bar with Yamauchi-sensei, climbed a mountain and watched a world championship skiing competition, helped a mega-drunk Japanese man sort his recyclables, and eaten horse meat!

Just 6 days ago, Jamie, Andrew, Elliott, and I left America from O'Hare airport in Chicago. Processing went smoothly, and the flight was long. Twelve and a half hours later though, we arrived at Narita Airport close to Tokyo. As soon as we cleared customs, I got hit with a serious case of nostalgia. Suddenly, I was the minority again and there were vending machines around every corner. It was a lot like seeing an old friend really. The most surreal part of it all, though, was meeting our Japanese professor before we hopped a train. Sure she's been teaching us how to speak and read the language for the past 2 years, but having her here to hold our hand all the way to Aizu was a big help I was glad to have had. Sure, it got annoying that she kept telling everyone we're fluent at Japanese (which isn't even close to true!), but I know she's just pushing us to try our hardest.

After about 20 straight hours of traveling, we arrived at 会津若松駅 (Aizu-wakamatsu eki), the Aizu train station. A short walk found us in front of the Washington Hotel where we stayed for two days before getting settled into our apartments. The next day, Dr. Orr picked us up from the hotel lobby. He's a professor of English here at the University, and he's been living in Japan for almost 16 years. He took us to 会津大学 (Aizu Daigaku), The University of Aizu. So we spent the rest of the day meeting all sorts of faculty and learning who's who around this place. Izumi-sensei and Nagashima-sensei have been crazy invaluable for getting us settled in. But the most important guy we've met so far is definitely Kawauchi-sensei, who I can tell is going to be one of our best friends while we're here. Heck, the FIRST night we met him he took us all out to an 居酒屋 (Izakaya), which is a Japanese pub.

The place is called Super Star. That's 'cause the owner's name is Hoshi-san, and hoshi means star in Japanese. He's the guy in green. Yamauchi-sensei told us to call him if we ever have problems with Aizu nightlife. The dude in back rockin' the vest is Kuma-san. He's the resident draftmaster.

Alright, it's Japanese culture lesson time. If you finish your drink, they refill it before you can say おねがいします. After every class he pours, Kuma-san gives a hearty "bottoms up!" and next thing you know, you're flyin' high and eating horse meat. Horse is delicious, by the way. Kuma-san is another one of those guys that we're going to be great friends with. I already promised we'd be back next weekend.

Nighttime shenanigans aside, we're doing legitimate stuff too. The next day, Dr. Orr introduced the 4 of us American students to 3 Japanese students. Yuu Ito, Kunitaka Endo, and Koichi Noda were all pretty excited to meet us and practice their English skills. Koichi already invited us to a party Saturday night that he's DJing, and Kunitaka went with us yesterday to help buy cellphones. It's really great that we're making so many social connections this early on. That evening, we parted ways with Hirotani-sensei and thanked her for the tremendous help she'd been.

We set out bright and early the next morning for the mountain town of Inawashiro. After we got to the top, there was this trashed dude who got off the train, ran into a wall, asked Elliott to help him sort his recyclables, then shook his hand. He followed us onto the shuttle bus after rocking some jumping jacks in the crosswalk.

See, Rika-sensei hooked us up with some tickets to the FIS Freestyle World Championship that just happened to be taking place in our prefecture. Here's a shot of the competition area as we were walking up to it.

It was pretty chilly, but we saw some amazing ski jumps. Freestyle jumps were going on that day. You wouldn't believe the air some of these guys were getting. All in all it was pretty awesome, but we had to leave after the first round since it was getting crazy cold. Here's a video of one of the most wicked jumps.

Speaking of mountains, the sky was incredibly clear the next day. You could see the whole mountain range really clearly, especially Mt. Bandai.


Yeah, check that out. That's behind the school. That's my back yard, man.

So even though Aizu is kind of in the boonies, it's really not that much of a change from home or even Terre Haute. The biggest difference is in the people. People from Aizu have an incredible sense of origin, and they're the most accommodating folk I've ever met. I've made a bunch of friends in just one week, and I know I'll meet so many more when school starts up and all the students come back from break. I miss all you guys at home, but these next few months are going to be incredible.

Sorry I didn't get this up sooner, but I've been super busy these past few days and we don't get internet in our apartment. I'll do my absolute best to update at least once a week!

And with that, I leave you with your Japanese lesson of the week. When you want to say "no problem," you normally say "mondai nai." But in Aizu, you can say "sasuke ne!"

Sayounara!

(You can check out Jamie's blog at http://kleemanjapan.blogspot.com. He's likely got some stuff I missed.)