Learning to Bow

The name of my current read is Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan by Bruce Feiler. My friend Heather was kind enough to loan it to me. I started reading it today on my train ride to meet my conversation student, Osami. I found it so entertaining that I was laughing out loud on the train, receiving curious looks from my fellow travelers. The book is about an American man who spends one year teaching English and American culture at a rural school in Japan and consequently his encounters with the Japanese culture. One of my favorite sections so far:

Several weeks into my stay, Mrs. Cherry Blossom [yes, that is her real name, translated into English]...hosted a welcome party for me along with some of her friends. As the party began, spread across the table at the center of her living room floor was a marvelous assortment of traditional Japanese party fare: heaping trays of sushi; bowls of pickled vegetables, tofu, and potatoes; plates of salads and compotes. In front of me, however, she had discreetly placed a small plate of egg salad sandwiches with a knife and fork tucked beneath a napkin. Moved by her thoughtfulness but by then quite completely accustomed to dining with chopsticks, I plucked a pair from the center of the table and joined with the other guests in prying nuggets of food from the trays and putting them into my mouth.

I had not lifted the first bite of raw fish halfway to my lips when the whole conversation stopped dead and everyone turned to marvel at my unimaginable skill.

"That's amazing," swooned a lady to my left as she focused her glasses on my fingers.

"So skillful," said another.

They were so genuinely impressed that they beckoned our hostess from the kitchen to witness this display of manual dexterity by the foreigner. She came rushing to my end of the table, dripping her serving spoon into my lap, and exclaimed, "Can you use chopsticks?"

I laughed out loud again on my train ride because this exact situation had happened to me just a few minutes prior. I've been meeting Osami for lunch every week for 3 months now. The location of our lunch depends on our mood, though pasta and Italian tend to occur frequently either because he enjoys the cuisine or thinks I won't enjoy something else, or a combination of the two, I'm not sure. (Those "western style" restaurants tend to have forks and knives on the table instead of chopsticks.) Today we ate at a steak restaurant, although I'd stated the Japanese restaurant would be fine.

This was a very Japanese style steak restaurant, chopsticks carefully arranged on the table. As our multi-plated meals came out to us, Osami was shocked as I picked up my chopsticks, broke them apart and dug into my salad.
"Ohh!" he said, quite surprised. "We can get a fork, it is no problem."
"Oh no," I responded, "this is fine," and ate away. He just kind of stared at me - "You can use chopsticks? You learned to do that here [in Japan]?"
"Nope, I used them in America, too, at Asian restaurants." This really distorted Osami's world. I tried to tell him I can't hold the chopsticks the Japanese way, so I must have learned from a Chinese restaurant, but he was very impressed.

While this wasn't the first time I'd used chopsticks in front of Osami, it might as well have been.

Australia Part Three

Tuesday morning, Laura and I left Perth in search of better things. We drove 3 hours south to Margaret River. MR is known for it's wine (woot!). Happily, our hotel was much nicer, even romantic! With 20 or so rooms, all named after different types of wine, it was a fun set up. Laura and I had an awesome dinner and bottle of wine at Wino's. Wednesday we drove further south, stopping at Mammoth Cave, and Leeuwin Lighthouse, and the beach! On Thursday we took an all day winery tour, where we met lots of fun people, lead by our fun tour guide, Silvano, and his friend, the grub, George. We decided to bite the bullet and purchase some wine and attempt to bring it back to Japan. On Friday, we drove back north to Perth, and spent hours waiting around at the airport, returning the car, and not reporting the damage. (I backed into a pole in the parking lot of our hotel in Perth. But the rental agent gave me a form that someone else had already filled out to mark the damage on the car. She had me cross out his signature and sign next to it. The previous signer had marked a scratch right where my scratch appeared. And I let the rental agency deal with it instead of paying $3,000...) We had to do some sweet-talking to the airlines agent to get our overweight baggage (3 bags, plus a case of wine - more than 23kg/50lbs). But apparently she'd had good experiences with some of the navy guys and made some calls to get our wine aboard - yay! Laura was a really great travel buddy, a really great planner, and a lot of fun to be with. This is a good thing since we spent 5 days 24/7 together! After the longest bus ride from Narita to Zama, and the help of Kelly to get from Zama to Atsugi, we parted ways and finally got home.

Perth Part Two

So I never finished my analysis of our Australian Adventure. To view all 500 or so pictures, click here.

So 4th of July - no fireworks. It was winter. No red-white-and-blue all over. Oddness. Dave and I had lunch at my new favorite restaurant - The Brass Monkey. Yes, I already ate there two nights previously, but it was so delicious that I needed to share the experience with Dave. We spent 4th of July walking about Perth - stopping in Target! - then a trip to Fremantle, and capped it off with the movie The Hangover.
Fremantle was such a cool town. I'd love to go back and spend more time there. It practically screams FORMER BRITISH COLONY. We walked around an old battlement, surveyed the Shipwreck Museum - complete with skeletons and sunken ships, including the hull of the Batavia, and gold and silver coins. We stopped by the Fremantle Markets and watched some buskers - or street performers. The movie theater was interesting. It was townhouse style - narrow and tall. Three stories, fading art-deco (with need of maintenance), great architecture, just lacking some TLC. It was smelled faintly of pot and sure enough as we were exiting, we saw a policeman in pursuit on foot - aka - sprinting after an unseen culprit.

The next day was wine tour day. We piled on the bus at 10am, and were blissfully sipping wine by 11am. We visited a total of three vineyards and one 2second stop at a chocolate "factory" (store.) It was a really fun afternoon with fun people.

Monday was Dave's last day ashore. We had lunch at an awesome little off-the-beaten-path cafe called Tiger Tiger. I enjoyed it, Dave would have preferred it if they had sold beer and meat. We looked around a 2nd had book store, which was neat. We had dinner at Little Creatures - a microbrewery restaurant. There was talk of the ferry boats not being able to get from the dock to the ship - this sparked hope that we'd get an extra day together - HAH. Yeah Right. We tried to catch a home-grown Aussie Rules Football game, but no luck. Instead we saw the movie Transformers 2. (Pause - It was $17AuD per person on a Monday night! CRAZY!) The movie wasn't that great but it was fun to see together. We drove back to the hotel, packed Dave's bags, and put him in a taxi at 1230am. :(

New Purchases

There was a small bazaar in Yokosuka this weekend. This is what I picked up: 1) Obi decor. 2) Nighlight for the hallway when visitors get up in the middle of the night and can't see... and for when i go downstairs and can't see.


Obi is the material that Kimonos are made out of. This was part of a Kimono. Now it's my wall decoration. I saw it and immediately fell in love with it. Plus it was "50% off" (which means the vendor just marked it up to begin with, just to make me feel like I got a deal). Their ploy worked.


This nightlight was also love at first sight. I saw it previously at another vendor, but he didn't have any unopened ones available. Out of 20 different designs I liked this one best. Even though there were many variations on pink. I just liked the fans.

So hopefully this will help Annie (and myself) from falling down the stairs.. As the Wrigleys can attest, they are tricky until you get used to them (slightly narrower and curved).


The guest bedroom and the "office" (junk) room were switched and finished before the Wrigleys got here in June. But I never posted new pictures of it.

The new Obi hanging fits in perfectly in this room! I didn't even plan it!

Also new to the household is this new desk chair.
Way more comfortable than the $10 wooden one I had before - where i felt like it would break beneath me at any moment. This blue one is nice because it a) compliments the colors of my rooms b) is cushoned c) is new!

Top Ten

Top Ten Noteworthy Things from Australia:
1. G'day mate! They really say it! All the time.
2. Good on ya, mate. Meaning - okay, sounds good, no problem, good choice. A term of general agreement.
3. Accents. Well accents are always fun to listen to, but it's especially fun to try and pick out the Irish and English influence.
4. Wine. Um, delicious.
5. English! As a former British colony, they all speak English there! Wahoo!

A note from Dave

So does Harry Potter come out tomorrow in the US? I’m hoping at some point it’ll be shown on the boat, but I’m not holding my breath. Wall-E was on today. I still think it’s an overall mediocre movie, I just get irritated with its preachiness. On a positive note, I got to see the Southern Cross last night for the first time. It made me sing the song “Southern Cross” to myself in the airplane. It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be. On another positive note, I dropped a 2000 lb bomb today. That’s about the same weight as the original Volkswagen Bug. It blew up too, which was nice. I also got to see an F-15 up close for the first time in the air. However, since he was supposed to be a bad guy, and I saw him behind me, that wasn’t so good. Oh well, can’t win them all ;). I’m hoping the pic of me and Relay off the tanker turns out.

The Land of Oz

An Attempt to Recap my Nine Days in Australia
My mom told me the use of "'B' headings" will help the reader focus and know what to expect. So I'll try those.

The Flight. We caught a bus from Atsugi, departing - late - at 4pm. We had no problems getting checked-in, despite the fact we were overweight with luggage. (Girls packing for winter means sweaters and boots...aka extra weight.) We made our flight, no problems. Leaving the gate was another issue, however. After taxing to the runway, we were informed there was an "electrical" problem. It was fixed, no problem, but it delayed us about an hour. An overnight-12-hour-flight is way easier than I expected. I was able to sleep a lot of the way. All of our baggage arrived with no problems. We got our rental car, no problem, though it took me a moment to remember to put the clutch in to start the car... but then it was like riding a bike - kinda.

The Hotel. Kelly navigated Laura and I from the airport to our hotel. All Seasons Perth was located - surprise - in the asian district of Perth. So it was just like being in Japan - we couldn't read much! Hah. The hotel was recently purchased and undergoing a make over - new lighting, new paint, etc. The receptionist was super nice and helpful. We had weird room keys: something like magnetic mini pencils...They had to be inserted to a special receptive on the wall when you first walked in to turn on the lights. A good energy saver. It had a "king" size bed. "King" because it was obviously two twin beds squished together. I know that this is common in hotels. However, other hotels have a nice padded thing that the put over the bed so you can't tell it's two beds made into one. This hotel did not. As a result, Dave and i slept in the "same" bed, but on two separate beds. Boo. It also had a lime green wall, which was interesting. Also, the room had a fake window: it was curtain covered glass, but instead of looking outside, it had a small framed picture of the Perth skyline, with a skylight (we think) above it. Something that became readily apparent were the thin walls. I could hear the elevator-style music that was playing in the hallway from the bed. I could hear my neighbor's business calls, word for word. I could hear when someone used the bathroom. Awesome. Luckily, not much time was spent at the hotel. We either walked or cabbed everywhere in the city.



The Boys. The carrier, the USS George Washington, was parked 2miles off shore, about 30km south of the city of Perth, in the town of Fremantle. I drove Mike, Kelly, Laura, and Lauren down to the port. Again, it was a coordinated effort that navigated us to where we needed to get to. We only knew that the boat was in Fremantle. That was it. We had to find it. Like a treasure hunt! We were able to find the ports easily enough. Kelly was able ask for directions easily - because they speak English in Australia!!! So awesome. I should have taken more pictures of the building the boys were loaded into. It was the "Old Passenger Terminal," with the railway 100m away, and the ocean 20m on the other side. It was old, charming, wooden, rustic, and plain old romantic. Not to mention the fact that the boys had to wear Standard Dress Blues - SDBs - so it was super picturesque. Yet I took like no photos of it. Sorry. So our hubbies were in their SDBs, with thier cute white covers, while the Enlisted sailors where in their cracker-jack uniforms. Just think of the famous VJ-Day picture of the sailor in Time Square kissing the nurse. Yup. Super cool. Additionally, everyone was required to wear their SDBs out that night. It made for awesome people watching. Tyler, as the only one of our group to make it off the boat that day (Glenn and Dave had duty, so we didn't see them till Friday morning), probably caught a lot of wistful glances as he escorted Laura, Kelly and I out to dinner. We had dinner at my new FAVORITE restuarant, The Brass Monkey. Reasons I love the Brass: 1. Housed on the 2nd floor of a building constructed in the 1880s, it has massive charm. 2. It has massive charm. 3. The food was awesome. After the Brass Monkey, we went to our first wine bar... whose name escapes me currently. This is where we people watched. It was fun to see sailors talking to women/girls, with the girls alllll about the guys. Fun times. Then Kelly and I retired to our rooms, alone. Boo. :(

Dave! The next morning, I got up bright and early and drove to Fremantle to pick up Dave. This is also the morning I backed the rental Hyundai Getz into a pole in the parking lot. UGH. So with a scratched up bumper, i followed "Karen," my GPS voice, to Fremantle. Yay! We got him a muffin and drove back to Perth. We had lunch at the Brass Monkey, yay, and walked around downtown. We stopped in at Target and bought Dave a few long-sleeved shirts so he wouldn't freeze. Later we met Kelly, Glenn, Tyler, and Laura out at MUST Wine Bar. Fun times. After a good glass of wine or two there, we hopped acrossed the street to Queen's Brewery. I'll tell you one thing: Australian Beer, awesome. Australian Wine, also awesome. Good on'ya!

Oz