Five for the price of one

Ok, so I realized that I am very very behind in posting. I haven't put up anything for my trip to Himeji castle or spaghetti dinner night at all, only the wonderful email from the evening at Da-kyum's, I've gotten a veritable wealth of information about how Japanese society works, and today I went on a trip to Tatsuno. That's five at least. I'm going to have to boil this down to the bare minimum.

Himeji Castle
After five weeks of planning to go to the local castle in Himeji, I finally went. I blame Kirimura-san for this. The very first week I got here, three separate groups of people offered to take me. Since Kirimura-san was the first, I felt obligated to go with him. However, he was busy that week so we planned on going the next week. For four weeks in a row something came up. Once, he had to go back to Yokohama. Another time I was busy. But my favorite was when he scheduled the trip, got everyone's ok, and completely neglected to ask me if that date was ok for me. Good job, Kiri-kun.

Anyway, a week and a half ago we finally went. Himeji Castle is the oldest and largest castle in Japan that hasn't been reconstructed in the past 400 years or so. Ooh, according to the brochure I just found again, it was originally built n 1346 and remodeled starting from 1601-1610. There's also something about The Last Samurai and a James Bond movie being filmed here, but I don't know any of the details. Since we're in condensed mode, here's the basics.

The Castle:

The inside of the Castle:

Harakiri-maru (Suicide Tower):

Of course, we had to commit suicide at Suicide Tower. Again according to the brochure, "This place is the place for Seppuku. The well near the building seems to have been used for washing a beheaded." That's Kirimura-san on the left and Tahara-san on the right.

There's also a well and a ghost story to go along with it. Tahara-san told it to me beautifully, albeit in very broken English.

Did you know you, too, can take a tour of Himeji castle from your own home? Thanks to the wonders of the Intarweb, now you can! This site will show you what this gorgeous castle looks like and probably get you lost too.

Spaghetti night
After going to the horrible Barukaino, I decided that I needed to show Tahara-san and Kirimura-san what real spaghetti was. I picked up some imported tomato sauce from America and tried to make a cream/cheese sauce. Since the cream sauce was 1) and experiment and 2) missing some ingredients (like real cheese and salt) it was ... ok. I guess. But after doctoring the tomato sauce with tons of spices from the same import store, it was really good. Also, in a blow against Japan (partially aided by the technical expertise of Kirimura-san) I made them apple crisp for dessert. This Kirimura-san's very first apple crisp ever. Internationalism marches ever onward.
Boo yeah, Japan! One point for me.

Dinner with Da-Kyum
Da-Kyum, the Korean girl from Japanese class, invited me over to her house for dinner. Now, she doesn't speak very much English or Japanese, so our communication takes place with a mix of 200 words total (plus some place, movie, and food names) in both languages and lots of hand gestures. The dinner invitation went something like this:

Me: Hey Da-Kyum, when are you going to have the pizza party?
Satsuki: Oh, she can't right now.
Da-Kyum: Anata (you) come dinner! Tomorrow daijobu (ok)?
Me: Sure! When? Itsu? (when)
Da-Kyum: Six? Seven? Good?
Me: Seven is good!
Da-Kyum: Hanbaagaa (hamburger steak) ok? Beef, pork, ika (squid), shrimp ippai (lots) [mixing gestures].
Me: [I can't eat three out of four of those meats, so...] Ano...kore wa chotto... (umm...that's a little...)
Da-Kyum: Ok! Pizza ippai!
Me: Ok!

Let me tell you, this pizza tasted so freaking good. One was on bread, one was on a crispy style crust that had gotten a little soggy, but it was all really American tastes. There was green pepper, onion, tomato sauce (might have been ketchup, but it actually worked), and tons of mozzerella cheese. Soooo good.

And she kept on feeding me! All night! After dinner there were desserts and then drinking snacks. And the whole time we're chattering on about how we like animated movies, how she absolutely loves Shrek and Shrek II, how long she and her husband have been married (at this point he chimed in too, telling me how she letter-stalked him for two years until they got married), what she does for excersize...

All with our super-broken conversations. It was awesome and I really really really wish I didn't have to leave in a week because I had a fantastic time and I like her very much.

Today
I went to Tatsuno city with Kohmura-san and company. It was a very nice afternoon - we went to the absolutely best restaurant I've been to in Japan. It's called East of Eden. Again, go figure. The bento box was fantastic - the eggplant, Japanese-style chicken nuggets, and little beef thingies were amazingly tasty and even the pickles were good and I hate (non-green) pickles here. But the thing that put it over the top was the cafe au lait. This turned out to be a iced latte that was worthy of Strada, the bestest cafe in the world. (Maybe not a Raul-latte, but it was darn close.) Those of you who know my coffee addiciton will know that this is the highest praise that I have for coffee.

Anyway. Today also included some of the best views of the local area that I've seen yet. This doesn't include the ones I've seen while driving around valleys of rice fields surrounded by mountains and rushing rivers, because I can't take pictures of that to show you. We also went to a soy sauce museum.

Japanese society
I learned quite a bit about how Japanese society works, albeit through a foreigner's eyes, and entirely through second - to - fourth hand hearsay. This includes the fact that Japanese men may not be expected to be exclusive as long as they're discreet, if you mention that a guy and a girl are hanging out together it means they're seriously dating, you're not allowed to tease most Japanese people because they take it seriously, there's very little sarcasm (I've noticed this on my own - often my sarcastic comments get met with confused stares unless they're so obviously false or absolutely dripping with sarcasm) and that Japanese men are often very shy about dating and will rarely take any steps to initiate anything. Not to mention the whole unspoken communication thing, which I am very bad at picking up on. The best I can do is follow what everyone else does and try to figure out why we're doing what we're doing.

This is all hearsay several times over - none of it I learned on my own, thank goodness, so feel free to correct me if anyone thinks I'm wrong. If it's true, Japan's just scored several points and I will never, ever, have a Japanese boyfriend.

I do realize that I'm probably breaking several rules by talking about this, much less posting in online, but it's really bugging me and I want someone to tell me this is all wrong. If it's not, please excuse my rudeness. It's because I'm a loudmouth American who has to say everything that's on her mind and I'm sorry to be offensive.

In a small victory for me, I finally made brownies tonight. The second batch is actually acceptable and tomorrow it goes in to the Ishikawa group for taste testing.

After retallying the score, Japan lept into the lead today, 8 to 5.5 . Judges are still out on whether the natural beauty of the country and amazing kindness of it's inhabitants are points to be given to me or to Japan.