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I’ve gotta get caught up. Mom’s taking pictures and pictures and pictures and I can’t post them fast enough. So, here are the pictures from our fishing trip with kocho-sensei and the Norimuras. Kocho-sensei picked us up at the apartment at 6 a.m. (God, that’s too early for a Saturday.) and bought us a Hokka Hokka Tei (Japanese fast food) breakfast. We went out on Yoshikatsu’s boat (my English teacher’s husband). It was really sweet of him to take us out—he’s running for town council and he needs to spend his weekends campaigning for the elections which are being held in the end of April. Despite his busy schedule he took us out fishing, out to lunch AND drove us home afterwards! I’d vote for him if I could!

On to fishing…
First there’s a lot of waiting around. (Fishing can be really boring.) My principal told me to be patient. I said I needed a beer.

Here’s my school principal with the first catch of the day. A tiny little thing, but it was beautiful… and taaasty!

First catch of the day.

I caught the next fish. I didn’t know I had a bite until kocho-sensei comes over and says, “Start reeling it in!” It was much harder to pull it up than I expected! This was essentially my first time fishing—definitely my first time to catch anything.

Giving thanks to the fish.

Almost immediately after I caught my fish my mom caught the same type. She didn’t know she had a bite either—kocho-sensei just came over and said, “Bring it up!” How does he do that?!? We thought maybe it was rigged…

We fished with poles and also just lines. Here Mama’s “line fishing” and it doesn’t seem to be as much fun.

Satomi’s mother-in-law fed us seaweed after we got back from fishing. I can’t believe I can eat seaweed. I’m eating whole fish now too. I’m really becoming more adventuresome and open-minded in my eating of seafood.

Then we taught a couple classes at Satomi’s English school. There was just one little boy for an hour, then three girls for another hour. We just played games and talked informally. It was fun and interesting. Here’s we are all together.

In the evening we had a Hanami party with kocho-sensei, kyoto-sensei and jimucho-sensei and their wives (The three most important people at the school: principal, vice-principal, and head office manager.). I felt like I had to be all formal and stuff, then I realized—they all just wanted to get drunk and I could relax and translate loosely for my mom.

It was really sweet of them to want to get to know her better. It also gave my mom and opportunity to see what an enkai was like. It was smaller, but just as wild with these three men love to drink! I think the whole experience really shocked her—jimucho-sensei was absolutely trashed and spent the evening blubbering on about something-excuse me-blubbering on about EVERYTHING just 6 inches from my face. I tried to be polite and interested, but his Japanese is just impossible to understand and I don't know what to say to him. Mama got to see it all and I feel like now she just… understands. What a cultural experience!

Here are the wives of kocho-sensei and jimucho-sensei. The one of the right offered to be my "Japanese mother" and is always bringing me food and teaching me how to knit! She's awesome (even if she's not smiling).

Here's kocho-sensei and his wife.

Here I am with jimucho-sensei who's trying to pour me more wine! I'm wearing a sweater that his wife knit for me. It's an awful color (did I mention this before?) but I thought if I'm ever going to wear it--in front of her would be a good time to do so.

Mama and I. Can you see how round my face is getting? I'm getting fat!

Oh! And we got to eat our fish for dinner too!

More to come,
Sierra

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// posted by Sierra @ 7:52 AM