Here you go Katie.

I think I’ll start this post out with a quick short story. Last Sunday I was getting ready to play tennis with two of the Japanese men from church, Hira san and Yamamura san, one of my IC friends, Koichi san, and a friend from OC on the Pac Rim trip, Chace Estes. We met at the church building to ride together and as I was about to get in the car, Hira san decided to start driving off before I was actually in and he ran over my foot with his car! No lie, he actually drove his car over my foot. Luckily, it didn’t hurt at all and I didn’t have to make yet another trip to the hospital/doctor like my first few months here, but I still didn’t tell him that he ran over my foot. Maybe I will someday.

Three Saturdays ago I went to Tsuchiura for a fireworks competition with a group of friends: me, Wade, Elizabeth, Katie, Minako, and another OC friend who is on the Pac Rim trip, Reid Agan. That’s right, this was not a fireworks show, it was a fireworks competition so there were a few people trying to make their fireworks bigger and better than the person before them. It was pretty cool. Some of the fireworks were huge and I saw a lot of things I never saw back in America. Plus, fireworks competitions and shows literally last for hours here in Japan. Another crazy thing about this event is the number of people who attended it. Last year, there were 800,000 people there. I haven’t heard a number on this year’s event, but I’m betting it was just as many people or more. We rode the train to Tsuchiura and it was packed. This is what it looked like:

Also, there were tons of Japanese foods available there, kind of like the fair in America, but I won’t lie; I like American fair food a lot better. I finally was able to try a fish on a stick. This is just a whole fish with a stick shoved through its mouth and cooked (thankfully) and then eaten by a foreigner like me. Of course, Japanese people eat them also. I didn’t like it. It was way too salty.

In my last post, which I guess you could call a “teaser” post, I told you I was going paragliding. I’m a man of my word. Elizabeth, Minako, Joey and I took the train to Ishioka, about 30 minutes from Mito, and went paragliding! For those of you who aren’t exactly sure what paragliding is, I wasn’t at first, it involves you, a parachute, a mountain, and you running off of the mountain. It’s not running off the edge of a cliff, but going to the top of the mountain and running down a steep part of the mountain until your parachute catches and lifts you into the air and then you fly for a while. We did tandem paragliding and our instructor that flew with us just so happened to be a Japanese guy who is the paragliding World Cup champion. It was pretty cool. Each of us was in the air for about 10 minutes and the view was really nice. My favorite part of the day, though, was actually after lunch while I was waiting for some of the others to have their turn. Those of us that weren’t flying at the time got to learn to paraglide on our own on the practice hill at the bottom of the mountain. We started at the very bottom of the hill and each time moved up higher until we got to the top. It was really cool.

Take off point.

I have decided that the last section of this post will be about some of the “delicious” things that I have eaten in the last month or two. Back in September my main school, Ishikawa, had its undoukai (sports festival). This is a huge, annual event for every school in Japan. After the sports festival the teachers all got together for an enkai, literally translated “drinking party.” These involve something like 12 course meals and even more courses of alcohol for a lot of the teachers. At this particular enkai I had an interesting menu of foods, many of which I had never had before. I ate sashimi (raw fish), shark fin, a whole fish head on a plate, eel sushi, and about 8 other plates that I can’t remember at the moment. Surprisingly, it was all pretty good or at least not bad. I actually took home a leftover raw eel, but I never ate it. It just sat in my fridge until it came back to life and I had to re-kill it and dispose of it in the proper Japanese way so I wouldn’t get deported.

Back in October I went to the Oarai Aquarium and had a great time there. One of my favorite things I saw at the aquarium was a giant octopus. Well, after I returned to Mito I went to my Koucho Sensei’s (principal’s) house for dinner and we had octopus salad. It was a little strange after seeing a real, huge, live one a few hours earlier. But I do like octopus a lot better than squid. I’ve had both a number of times in my school lunch since then. Usually my school lunch is not bad, but yesterday I had two whole fish sitting on my lunch tray in front of me. They weren’t staring at me like sometimes, luckily they were breaded and fried so I couldn’t see their eyes, but they were pregnant and tasted very fishy. The eggs weren’t very good. If they hadn’t been breaded and fried I don’t know if I could have finished them. Oh, one last thing that popped into my mind! In another school lunch back in October we had a salad that consisted of, literally, at least 150 tiny fish on a plate. That’s at least 300 tiny eyeballs staring at me. I devoured them. They were pretty good, but I don’t think I would order them at a restaurant if there were other choices.
I am going to the mountains of Fukushima this weekend to do a little camping! Lance Towers is in town visiting and gets to go with us. I’m really excited!