“Valentine” done different

The beauty of being in another country is seeing how that culture celebrates holidays. In Japan, they don’t celebrate Christmas, but they have some of the biggest Christmas displays in the entire world. They love celebrating the decorations and idea of Christmas and will go to the extreme with lights and themes.

For Valentine’s Day, they do things a little different than us Americans and I find it very interesting.

For starters, it’s Valentine Day. No s. Walking down the street; through all the stores and malls, everywhere it says Valentine. I thought this was typical Japanese translation, missing out on a letter here or there, but a Japanese woman explained exactly how they celebrate this day.

The woman makes chocolates for the man she loves. On Valentine day, she gives over the chocolates to the man and declares her love to him. This is the time the woman reveals she in fact loves the man (sometimes to his surprise and maybe delight). The man takes the chocolates and decides if he wants to return her love or deny her, answering with a yes or no. If he chooses to say he loves her; returning her affection, the man then buys her a gift that’s worth more than her chocolates and gives it to her with his answer. He doesn’t have to say yes..

The woman every single year is the one that buys the man chocolates. She gives Valentine gifts to her son, to her husband, to her father, to her male co workers; and when it’s a little girl, she gives it to her brother, her male teacher, her male classmates, and to her father.

Do you get the theme?

The women are required to buy for the men in every circumstance. Not the man.

Interesting, right? How nice would it be to be the man here?

Today, on Valentine’s day, it’s snowing a lot. A lot a lot! I can only imagine a lot of Valentine’s dates have been postponed due to the weather and rolling blackouts that keep happening. G-man has to stay on the ship tonight and tomorrow night, so there won’t be anything special going on here. It’ll just be me, staying warm under the blanket, hoping the power stays on so I can have a little entertainment with Netflix or maybe a book.

We went to Tokyo all this week and got to see Mount Fuji. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw we caught a rare glimpse of the “shy mountain”, at the very last moment of us being there. The tour bus was pulling away when the tour guide gasped and exclaimed Mt. Fuji was visible. We all rushed to the window for a glimpse and it was breathtaking. I can’t wait to show the pictures from that day. It was incredibly hazy and the glare was so strong it hurt our eyes, but it was beautiful, nonetheless.

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Last Saturday, a storm came in and gave us over 12 inches of snow. The most snow fall in this region in 45 years! It shut down the airports and everything else. Not to mention the power that night. It’s safe to say the power went out close to 30 times! After the 4th, we finally decided to start playing a card game with the candles at the ready. It turned out to be one of my favorite nights here…and not just because I won every game either.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you! And have a lovely weekend!

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I don’t get to say this often

And there’s a good chance that no one wants to hear it, but it’s supposed to snow tomorrow! This makes me happy because I can sit inside where it’s warm and toasty and watch it fall. It’s also supposed to be over 60 mph winds, so it’s very unlikely I’ll be going anywhere, but deeper under my blanket.

Over the past week, I’ve busted my hump on my schoolwork. Even spending 6 straight hours finishing a project that was due…that day, but I finished with 2 hours to go. I like to get it down to the wire. So needless to say, leaving for the grocery store 5 minutes away is as much as I’ve done. And the fun of that is giving the clerk $2 in 10 cent coins. I wanted to do $5 but apparently there’s a 20 coin limit. Go figure.

Every morning between 5 and 6am, the Japanese Navy sounds their incredibly LOUD ship horns. Not just a little ‘toot’ but a full on wail 10 times over, long, short, long long, then short short. It’s constant and, did I say it’s every morning, including weekends? Yes. They are all out to sea right now, but when they come back into port, I’ll be sure to record it one morning, so I can have someone say, ‘seriously!!?’ along with me.

Here’s some randomness that’s been my week:

Since being here, I’ve done a lot of baking. Who knew a little toaster oven would be such a good little baker? I had a hankering for some bread, and whipped up some beer bread. I’ll be making a second loaf this weekend, since G-man was so fond of it, but from that to Indian Bread and homemade mac and cheese, I’ve been on a crazy roll!

One thing that’s funny here: I usually don’t have anyone sit next to me on the trains. It’s the whole “American” thing where they like to avoid us…or maybe just me, but if they can help it, they’ll sit somewhere else when they see me.

G-man found his favorite rum of all time and had it shipped from London. I was the taste tester and let me tell you, this stuff is good, and this is coming from a non-rum drinker.
I finally, after 2 months of growth, have my bangs right where they needed to be (where they should have been all along) and am happy.

Continuing on with my randomness.. I moved the couch around and couldn’t help but enjoy the gorgeous like streaming in the windows.

I made waffles that we realized were in the fridge by mistake, and would you know they didn’t taste any different?

I also made this delicious chicken which let me tell you, I had no idea I made it look so pretty until I was about to serve it. How could I not take a picture of this accident!? By the way, it was delicious too!

Ok, I think this concludes my randomness for the week. I hope you have a great weekend, and enjoy yourselves in this cold..or warmth..whatever you’re feeling. : )

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There’s something about this place

I can’t say what it is exactly, but over the past few month, if I don’t talk about or write about something that happened, that day, I’ll forget about it entirely. I think I can wait a week to collect all my thoughts and events to compile into a nice pretty package (blog post) but when it comes time to sit down and type it out, nothing comes to mind.

So is the case again, while I sit here under my blanket; the blanket I’ve been under all day long, listening to the wind howling outside the glass windows that are fogged up from my warm interior that’s met with the cold outside. It’s supposed to snow tonight, so they say, and I wouldn’t mind one bit. It won’t stick, but to see the soft flakes fall down while I watch from the fourth floor would be a relaxing sight. I have the apartment to myself tonight. G-man has to stay on the ship until tomorrow, so after kissing him goodbye at 5:45 this morning, I was alone. I don’t mind it, I have plenty of schoolwork to keep me busy, but it will be lonely once the night comes.

In true fashion, I haven’t done much since being here, in the way of tourism. I have been a (partial) slave to my schoolwork every day, only escaping to go grocery shopping. Which I must say was a truly fun adventure. I first stopped for lunch on the eighth floor of the mall before going to the basement where the grocery store is, filled with fresh fish, produce, a butcher, and a fully stocked grocer on the other side.

lunch spot

A highlight was ordering two pounds of ground beef by holding up my two fingers, only to receive 200 grams of it. I forgot it came in grams, even though I had just ordered 400 grams of bacon seconds earlier. I was able to make one taco with it…one. But it definitely served to give me a good chuckle.

G-man and I went to a big mall (malls are everywhere here) in Yokohama to look at six floors of furniture. We like looking at furniture, it’s a thing of ours. Furniture here is comical for us tall Americans. It’s all miniature sized and low to the ground, our knees were up to our chest on anything we sat on. One beauty of looking at furniture in another country is they don’t bother you. We’re just Americans, we’re not there to buy, and they know that. Plus the lack of understanding Japanese gives us an advantage and assurance we’ll be left alone. They say their ‘say meh say’ (my wording, not theirs), which I think I’ve figured out means, “greetings”?? I’m still not sure but once they say that we become ghosts.

After the long day of walking, we stopped in a conveyer belt sushi place. We sat next to two old women and began grabbing sushi that went by. Midway through, the older woman next to me begins talking to me in Japanese and I look on clueless not to mention helplessly. After much back and forth of ‘I don’t understand’, she grabs the waitress who asks me in broken English if I like the sushi. Then they all begin pointing to the chef and making hand motions as if they were packing rice to make sushi. We finally figured it out! They’re telling us to stop grabbing the conveyer belt sushi and instead have the chef make it as it’s ten times better fresh.

Ah Ah, Arigatou gozaimasu! (thank you) and we all giggle as they keep talking, while G-man and I say under our breaths we have no idea what they’re now saying. As we eat the freshly prepared sushi, the old ladies watch on with big smiles on their faces waiting for us to say how delicious it is. It’s cute. We’re loving how they helped us and are enjoying this restaurant more by the minute. As we get up to go pay, the young couple on our left, who didn’t say a word to us the entire time, stop us to tell us bye bye with big smiles on their faces. Genuine kindness.

We’re floored but this is truly how the Japanese are. We say bye bye and while at the register, the old woman comes up to me with her flowers she bought from the market and tells me to smell them. I do and they’re as sweet as honeysuckle and I tell her ‘sweet’ ‘nice’ and she says ‘nice’ and giggles right back and walks away.

We walk out slightly dazed from everything that happened but loving it just the same and vow to go back there next time we’re in the city.

This memory I want to remember. It happened three days ago so the fact I still remember it means I definitely want to hold onto it longer. I like this place. Its humidity ruins my hair and the wind keeps me cold, but there’s something about this place that makes me like it more and more each time I stay.

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