iPhones, oysters and the like

The second week brought a little more sleep and a lot more progress. Monday was another frustrating day of being told I still couldn’t purchase two cell phones at the same time, just because I was a foreigner. Corin had his welcome party, called an enkai, that evening and we soothed troubles with good friends and good drinks, plus a big plate of French fries. Tuesday, things looked better. With a fifth trip to the electronics store in mind, I decided to just use my American Visa and switch the billing later. Thanks to Lucy and a shiny little card, I walked out of the store with two new iPhones and a means of connecting to the outside world. My predecessor Lucy was indispensible through all of this, as her Japanese is perfect and mine is nonexistent. As the day closed, we said a sad good bye to Courtney and Joe as they embarked on their next journey back in England (Courtney is moving there after a short visit home to Australia). Wednesday was Lucy’s last day and we finished up all the loose ends I couldn’t have accomplished on my own. The next two days were filled with halting conversations with coworkers and learning how to communicate with only a few key words and lots of sign language. Difficult but not impossible, I’m happy to report. By Friday, we were ready for another weekend to begin. The Port Festival (Minato Matsuri) prompted all of us to Suehiro, Kushiro’s drinking district. The festival was started in 1948 to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Kushiro opening its port to shipping. With my handy dandy calculator, I’d say that equals 113 years of Kushiro being a prominent port town. We watched old men and elementary school students pull huge ships down Highway 44 and took part in a two hour all-you-can-drink party with Chris, Shey, Corin and the two new ALTs that arrived last Wednesday, Tim (from New Zealand) and Ron (from Canada).  Saturday morning was marked, once again, by the baseball team being all too enthusiastic to practice on a weekend. The day was spent cleaning and relaxing, as most of our Saturdays seem to be spent thus far. On Sunday we hopped on the #12 bus to Kushiro Station and wandered the festival. We explored the EGG (the Ever Green Garden) and the MOO, Kushiro’s two prominent buildings down by the water. We even got to see synchronized unicycle dancing performed by grade school girls. The things they do for fun here in Kushiro.

Sunday night was definitely the highlight of our weekend, as we were invited to Mr. Sawano’s house for a fresh oyster BBQ. The town that our friend Thomas is working in is famous for their oysters. Akkeshi is about 40 minutes by car from Kushiro and Mr. Sawano drove up on Sunday morning to get a cooler full of the crusty molluscs. We were picked up by Aki and his wife, June, who had just returned from a visit to Kyoto to see her parents and their 21 year old son. June dropped the three of us off and we were ushered into Mr. Sawano’s backyard. There was a cooler of beer, a cooler of oysters, multiple skewers of chicken and pork, plus onions, green peppers, rice balls and little sausages. We ate like kings. I had never had oysters in any form before and although the rare ones are nice, the medium well ones are my all time favorite. They explode open like their harboring mini packs of dynamite and make for an exciting experience when you’re sitting right next to the coals. We chatted well into the night and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Life in Japan is an amazing adventure and I can’t wait to find out what happens next!