Thursday, April 05, 2007

A Brief Visit

Anticipation. Excitement. Finally, my first visitor to this small part of the world that I call home. It was almost last minute that Corey could guarantee his visit to me; but I was looking forward to it from the instant he said there was a small possibility he could make it. We met in Sendai at the Starbuck's – a location that is safe for two foreigner's to recognize, even if one has never been to this area before. I left straight from work and made it there about 40 minutes before our meeting time. I ordered my favorite Starbuck's drink, a Caramel Machiatto and killed the time by reviewing some vocabulary. Finally, he came walking through the doors, we hugged and I handed him a Welcome to Northern Japan can of beer as we made our way out of the place.

Got the locker situation figured out, stored our bags and guided our way to the “drinking part of Sendai”, known as Kokubuncho. We walked around for quite a while until Corey spotted a place where we could order beers for basically $1.00. We had dinner here and drank here for the majority of the night, only leaving once to try to find a new, cheap place. This $1.00 a beer place was basically like striking gold since all the other places were charging about $8.00 a beer. We had a few beers at another place before returning to the cheap drinking spot. We closed the place down, leaving at 5am. At this point, it's like well, what a waste of money to pay for a hotel, why not catch the first train out at 5:30 and hope that Katie will allow us to crash on her floor (thanks, Katie!). Cracking open the Welcome to Japan beer, we finished it off on the train while all those around us were preparing to go to work. My only thoughts were – sucks to be you!

We made it to Katie's after a brief jaunt around a baseball diamond and a walk around her city. Corey didn't want to knock before 7am. Thank goodness she didn't care – and on the floor we crashed until afternoon. We woke up, and the two of us along with Akira went to Matsushima Bay. I had heard from many people that the boat tours are really great – and since I've never done one, that is what I had planned for us to do. It would have been a lot better if they didn't charge an extra $6.00 to actually go and see from the viewing deck!

We watched from inside the boat as dozens of pine covered islands passed before us. Our afternoon consisted of doing the Matsushima tour of displaying the National Treasure temple named Zuigan-ji, checking out the museum, and Godai-do temple. Afterwards, we took Corey to a Japanese video arcade so we could play Taiko. Akira rocks at this and it's a lot of fun to play. We had dinner with Meg and a follow up experience of onsen for Corey.

The next day, even though school isn't in session right now – I still had to go to school. We first went to the school that I travel to 2x a week. On that day, they held a goodbye ceremony for the teachers. Everyone at school gathered in the gym, whereby the principal announced to the whole school all the teachers who are leaving and where they are going. Following the assembly, everyone gathers outside to “see the teacher's off”. The leaving teacher's walk through the crowd as everyone is clapping and cheering for them. Once the assembly was completed, we came back to my base school. Most of the teacher's weren't around so we walked around the school and I made my student's ask him questions in English. It was really good! They were learning English and they didn't even know it! =)

I introduced him to all the teacher's since my strongest relationships with teacher's were at this school. They let us leave early -so I took him up to the park I found a few months ago – Asahiyama park. It gives the best views of my area and really portrays the abundance of the rural setting of my area. There's a few temples to be seen and just a really peaceful, quiet area. I had wanted to show him a boat in my area but it took a lot longer than I had expected to get there and we had to turn around just as we got there to make it on time to Yumie's for dinner. Yumie & family fed us full of food and then it was straight to my Adult Conversation Class for another welcome party for Corey. We came home and had a “beer taste test”. We did this in Korea as well, and for both nights that Corey was at my house. It's a really good way to taste all the local beer in a quick manner. So, Corey will close his eyes and I will serve him 4 beers – in the end, we rate which beers we think taste the best.

these were Corey's top 4

It was unfortunate I had to work two of the days he was here – but I feel that he got a really good “Japanese” experience just by going around with what my life is like here on a daily basis. On Friday when I was at work, one of my adult students picked him up and they talked for 5 hours while I was working. We had one last dinner at a place that was just really happy to have two foreigner's in there. We said our goodbye's at the train station and he made his way to continue the rest of his trip. It was so refreshing to have someone here to talk to everyday, eat with, laugh with and be able to communicate with. Thanks for coming, Corey =)

click on Corey & I to see all the pictures (courtesy of Corey's camera)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Caramel Machiatto is my favorite starbucks drink too!!!! i can't wait to come visit and i'm sooooo busy this month and next that i think its going to be here before i know it!! love and miss you... and ANSWER YOUR PHONE WHEN I CALL!! jk, but i'll reach you one of these days! :)