WooHoo!

Congratulations !!

Congratulations go to our cousin Shanna and her husband Jayson who just had their first baby! It's a boy and my mom tells me his name is Landon.

I got them a baby gift a while back in Kyoto, it was a real cute kids kimono that was all padded so they could wrap a baby up all tight in it, but....it's pink. I took a gable. Then again, who says baby boys can't wear pink.Who decided that huh, silly rule. If I have a baby boy someday, he'll have a pink mohawk. Ah, I digress!

So, good luck and best wishes cousin Shanna and Jayson on your new baby.

Let's Sumo!

Aaron here: So, last Thursday, we participated in a truly Japanese event. We went to see some wrastling! Of the Sumo persuasion, of course. It was very fun, and exciting, and we made an entire day out of it in the great city of Osaka. We had to get up pretty early to travel to Osaka to buy tickets. Unfortunately, though we got to the booths at 8:00 a.m., the line was ridiculously long, and a police officer on duty told us that we'd be better off waiting in line to buy the more expensive tickets. It ended up costing us about ten extra dollars each, but it was totally worth it.
Here's some introduction info for you. There are about 800 Sumo wrestlers in Japan. Because of this, Sumo is an all day, almost every day activity. We hit up a Macu (McDonald's) after buying our tickets, but we were seated around 10, and already, the bouts were going.

Here is Kendra and Katherine, still early in the morning. There is a large area of floor cushions around the arena, where anyone is allowed to sit until the owners of the seats arrive and boot you. So, we were sitting about 20 yards away from the arena for several hours. It was a good vantage point.

Like a concert, the wrestlers fight in order of rank. The beginners wrestle first, and the later in the day, the higher ranking the wrestlers. Here are a couple low-ranking wrestlers. We got to watch them close up, which was very interesting. You can tell they are low-ranking because of their dull-gray mawashi (their big diaper-ish wrestling garb). There were some real big boys, even in the younger, less experienced ranks.

Before each division of wrestlers began their bouts, they came out in very decorative outfits. The green one here is actually a picture of a small deer pushing a wheelchair-bound child along. We thought this was kind of strange, and it almost definitely means that that particular wrestler is from Nara (mentioned in previous posts) which is famous for its domestic deer population.

Later in the afternoon, we moved up to our seats. Here is a view of the Dohyo (arena) from farther up the stands. The arena is made completely of a special kind of clay. There were even cracks running through it. The boundaries are made of tightly wound straw that are partially buried into the clay.

In case you are unfamiliar with the rules of Sumo, they are very simple. Basically, once the match begins, one wrestler needs only to force the other to cross slightly over the circular boundary, or to tuch the dohyo with any part of their body other than their feet. Because of this, the matches often only last a few seconds.

Here is the introduction of the highest ranking wrestlers. The wrestlers are divided into two divisions--the East and the West. Actually, the divisions have nothing to do with where the wrestlers are from or what locations they represent. It is merely a way to make two groups to fight each other. For instance, there are two Yokozuna (top ranking wrestlers), one from the East, and one from the West, but neither have to be from either side of Japan. In fact, one of them right now is from Mongolia.

Below, there are two videos. One is the introduction dance of one of the Yokozuna. The other, is a video of the final match of the night, between the other Yokozuna and a Ozeki (second highest rank). This night, both Yokozuna lost, which is ridiculous. One of the them was 11-0 and the other was 10-1 before this night, so both of them losing is just strange. When there is a strong upset toward the end of a night, the crowd may throw their cushions to show how impressed they are. You can judge by the amount of cushions thrown in the video how impressed we all were. Enjoy.

Nara Friendship Hike

Sorry for the long delay in updating. Aaron was suppose to make this post a week ago but he forgot. Silly guy. So, this post is about our "Friendship hike" we took a while ago in Nara. Oh and Happy Easter Everybody.

This is the day before at Abel's house. He has these cute octopus footstools that we put our hats on to make them look cuter then ever. Aaron is asleep in the background or something.

Here is Katherine hugging her octopus. She thinks they are the cutest thing ever.

Okay so yes, this picture probably looks weird. In Nara there is this huge park and a big temple. There are also a bunch of deer that live there. They are fat, lazy, pushy deer who only want crackers from you. Their antlers have been cut off in a Buddhist ritual. They seriously can go anywhere, and they aren't afraid of anything; not people, not cars, nothing. They even cross the road at the crosswalks and, no joke, we saw them wait for the green light to go before crossing.

Here is one clever deer waiting by a food vendor to get people's scraps. So Odd!!

So, the reason we were at the park was for this fire ritual where they roll these giant flaming poles across the banister of a big temple. It is suppose to be lucky if the ashes fall on you...we were quite far away...see the picture of the crowd above. very popular festival.

okay so onto the hike. So we had to get up really early and travel by train to the tiniest station ever. There we met up with the rest of the group; about 80 other people. We broke up into smaller groups then went in shifts down this 10k hiking trail. This is the very beginning. This is the sake dedicated to a shine where we started.

Here is the view from a hill top overlooking Nara. It was a perfect day!!

Most of the hike was countryside. Lots of mikan (japanese clementine orange) groves. Very pretty seeing all the orchards. Not to mention the amazingly cheap and fresh produce all along the way.

This is Katherine and I at a rest stop that had one of those wood cut-outs. We packed a lunch and ate in the ruins of this old stone building.

A nice view of the mountains.

The very end of the hike was a shrine that was covered in Chickens! Hens and Roosters! They were very pretty oriental type chickens. They just ran free through the whole place. Here are some roosters just hanging out a tree.

They were really crazy! The roosters would run around chasing each others. The best was the way they would crow. It wasn't your normal American "Cocka doodle do.' It was this weird, long drawn-out sort of wail. There is a video of it down at the bottom.

Here is a video of the fire festival. It was kind of hard to see it from our angle

Sorry again for the long delay. We've actually been rather busy. We just went and saw sumo wrestling last weekend in Osaka, so I will post some of the pictures from that soon. It was a crazy match! Both of the yokozuna (top wrestlers) lost their matches. It was so amazing. As soon as the last yokozuna lost, everyone in the place threw their seat cushions down towards the ring.

Happy Easter everyone. Hope you're all doing great.
Much love , kendra and aaron

Mid-year conference in Tokyo

Sorry for the long delay, we've actually been kind of busy!
So, Kendra here. Here is the story of the mid-year conference.

It starts with a 9 hours overnight bus trip.
Not...very...fun.

Before we all went mad.
Look at that guy over there!
This is the first day in Tokyo. We went to the Ghibli Museum. The studio that makes Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and about 800 more movies.
This is on the roof. There is this giant metal guy. Pretty cool. The museum was set up like a giant fun house kind of. No real set path, just wander around this sweet house.
We went to the cafe and I got "spaghetti for people who like mischief." It was spaghetti with fried chicken on top, odd as it sounds it was good. This is Andrea's coffee, so pretty she didn't even want to drink it.
This is later that night. We all met up for dinner at Sensoji temple. We had some amazing Italian food and Andrea, Ben S. , and I all split a bottle of Black Cat Riesling. Very nice.
Then we went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building. Why? Well way up on top there is a really sweet (and free) observation deck. But, it is really hard to take a picture because Tokyo goes on forever! No joke, it just kept going on and on, all around you. Kind of spooky.
Aaron went with Abel to play around in Akihabara (the electronics capitol of the world) while myself and the other Fulbrighters attended the conference and did the work. It was informal so it was actually a nice, relaxed talk with everyone about the months past and months to come. Afterward we went to this place for dinner called "Popeye's." The special thing about this place was...40 microbrews on tap! (pass out) Okay, so everyone who knows us well, knows we are beer snobs, spoiled on Kalamazoo microbrews. So, we were SO excited to get some real beer, not stuff from a can. At this place though, a pint was about 900-1500 yen, so about 8-13$ a pint. Expensive yah. But did that stop us? No. The variety was amazing. Here is Aaron with a heferwizen and Mana with a half beer half ginger ale concoction.
Wow, nice face Pat. This is me with my heferwizen and Pat with a silly face indeed.
On top of great beer the place had AMAZING food. Here is Abel trying some Emu sashimi. Yes, raw Emu, yes Emu like the bird. Aaron and I both had some. It was good but nothing to go crazy over.
Here is Andrea, Charles Z., and Katherine. Charles hides in the darkness.
'Okay, so in the bathroom was an advertisement for "happy tail ale" a non-alcoholic beer for dogs. What's the point? you ask. I have no idea.
Over all, I think about 22 people were there. WOW. It was tons of fun. We were there for a long, long time.
More of the Fulbright family.
Mana had the task of counting up all the money. The bill was...very very high. Think well past 500$ then double that and add some more.
So, since Aaron and I are trying to save money up, we decided to go home by way of the this type of ticket that lets you ride for an unlimited distance for only 2,300 yen a person. This was a warning sign in the bathroom. Oh Engrish. Also on the way home was a stop in Hamamatsu, the town where Langdon lives. So, we stopped there for a day. It's a really pretty city with lots of modernization and quite a large gaijin population. We went to a Brazilian place for dinner then an English pub for drinks, followed by a trip to a very quaint Japanese bar where there was only 9 seats. It was the mama-san's birthday so we got to sing to her and help her eat her birthday cake. It was a great time. We got to really interact with some amazingly friendly and open-minded Japanese people.
This is a cool fountain by the station in Hamamatsu. Very pretty station.

Well, I think Aaron is going to take over and update you all on our recent trip to Nara and our walk on the "Friendship Hike."
Spring is really starting to get into full swing here. It's so nice to sit in the house and not be freezing cold. Hope you all are well. Miss you all!
Kendra