Laptop still Net-less

So...I will have Internet in my アパート sometime next week, so that is when I will start deluging this lj with pictures...beware the 16th for picspam! Your Friends pages should quake and tremble with fear!

I have gotten more or less used to the Japanese keyboards...periods and apostrphes and such have all moved but it`s all good. I am happily stowed in 青森市 now ... it`s much bigger than I thought it would be. It feels like Cape Cod in these summer days. Very beach-y and humid. The whole country (including fancy-pants Tokyo) smells vaguely of fish, but I have gotten accustomed to it already. (My first day here I was wandering around with a bottle of perfume in my pocket)

青森市 is beautiful...the whole 県 is beautiful so far. The ねぶた festivities were amazing. The festival is a little unclear in purpose...I guess a lot of American ones are as well. I mean, who actually knows why we put ornaments on a tree at Christmas? Lots of people have different theories (like the Celtic war trophies hung in front of their dwelling to show their prowess), but the important part is that when us Americans see a furnished Christmas tree, we feel moved. That`s pretty much how ねぶた is. My supervisor couldn`t actually tell me the history of the thing (there are different theories abounding even if you google it), but he knew that when he hears the flutes and drums of the ねぶた祭, his `heart races`. The people all dress in some fantastic traditional ゆかた, which I too wore, and do the traditional ねぶた dance -- hopping. It`s dead tiring, but awesome. We jumped with our office (our supervisor even kept his funny hat on at all times...the rest of us pretty much carried them tied to our wrists or something...you should see these hats. The world has never seen the like) and a bunch of kids from Maine on a school exchange trip and lots of little Japanese kids who I will probably teach at some point or another. Nate, Dan`s predecessor, is still around and he jumped with us as well. When he came to Japan three years ago, he didn`t know any Japanese. Pretty much in the lastyear or so, he set his mind to learning it and just did it. He just passed the highest level of JLPT this spring. Anyway, the little Japanese kidlets loved him hamming it up throughout the jumping.

I also went to dinner at my supervisor`s house last week and ate a home-cooked meal with him and his family and then did some 花火 in the backyard. Dan was less impressed than I was (due to the legal home-fireworks of Virginnia), but I was dead impressed. Amazing stuff, that. And I had some なっとう　fried and it wasn`t half bad.

Also went to an 温泉 ...I know, I thought it would take longer to work up the courage too. Everything is easier to do when everybody else thinks it`s easy...so Karina and Mikki just waltzing around naked really helped me to not be so self-conscious. It was friggin awesome though. There was even one place where there were electric shocks being sent through the water. Mad wierd, I don`t know if I liked that one. >.<

But yeah. 日本が大好きだ。foh real.