Tug of War

Last weekend there was a Tug of War festival in Sendai. Every year
about 4,000 people take part in either making the 365 meter rope, or
pulling the 365 meter rope. The rope is ENORMOUS it weighs 4 tons. It is hard to even grab and lift off the ground. I had a bunch of my friends come in from out of town, and we all had a great time. It felt good to have people come and not only see my city, but enjoy themselves while they are here. To most people Sendai is just another stop on the train, so having festivals like this is a good way for people to experience the city.

Try and guess which one is me.



Its super crazy, there are guys running around beating on drums, guys yelling through megaphones, yet everyone seems to know what they are supposed to do. There were five "matches" and the red team beat the blue team 3-2. I competed twice for the blue team (wining one and losing one) and then I had to pee. The thing about Japanese Tug of War is there are "attackers". The attackers get to try and pull people from the other team off the rope within the first 50 meters. However, what ends up happening is there is just a huge brawl in the middle as the attackers just choose to fight each other. There were guys running along the rope just hitting people on the head with flags. Crazy. There were quite a lot of yakuza there too, which was kinda cool because you always wonder if people really are yakuza, but during the tug of war you could tell which ones actually were by their tattoos.


After the match was over, there were a bunch of guys with little chainsaws cutting up the rope.



Then I tried to take the whole thing home.


I eventually managed to break off a much smaller piece.

Shortly after the 8 of us would return to my apartment and attempt to go to sleep for the night. However, due to the juvinile state of one British man in particular, there was not a lot of sleep to be had. Somehow I was transported back in time to jr. high summer camp, complete with fart jokes and random utterences of "Your Mom!". I guess 4,000 people tugging on a rope for two hours will bring out the kid in all of us.

Settling in

The first few days in Sendai I just kind of walked around a bit. There are just over 100,000 people here, but it is really spread out, and there isn't much exciting to do. So I guess its like a small Fresno. My apartment couldn't be in a better location. I am about a 5 minute walk from what little "downtown" we have here in Sendai, and 2 minutes from work and the train station. There is a driving range and a bowling alley here also, but its a 20 minute bike ride, so I don't go there much. I eat dinner almost every day at Joyfull. The waitresses all know that I am foreign, and they bring me a knife and fork every meal, even though I usually just use the chopsticks. Joyfull is like a Denny's except that is serves Japanese food. I know every dish on the menu. My two favorites are the chicken tempura with rice and the Udon noodles with shrimp tempura. Both are 499. It's cheaper than cooking, plus there is nothing to clean afterwards.

Here are some pictures I took my second day in Sendai:

This is Sendai river, the bridge you see is for the trains.




This is looking the other direction, the big smokestack is the nuclear power plant.




This is a flower I saw near my apartment.



And this sign shows the building of the bridge. At least I think so, its all in Japanese....



So that's a quick look at my new home, more to come soon.

And today I got the Internet.

Wow. I have been here for almost two and a half months, and just one hour ago I finally rediscovered the joys of a working internet connection. I know I said I would update this page quite often, and two months of inactivity would make it seen as if I was less than truthfull. However, if anyone is still reading this page, rest assured that I will be posting quite a bit. This is going to be a record of my journey after all, and if the rest of my time here is like the beginning, I am not going to want to forget much at all.

I arrived in Japan on Saturday July 12th, working with about 4 hours of sleep since Thurday morning. I couldn't sleep on the plane, I was leaving the Americas for the first time and my stomach was churning with anticipation. After a landing at Narita airport and clearing customs, I boarded a plane for Fukuoka which would land at 9:30 pm. I meet my contact there, and she informed me that we would be waiting for Ayako (another new teacher who just so happened to be at my training session) to arrive and then we would walk to my hotel. She neglected to tell me that this would end up being a three mile walk with me carrying two bags wearing a combined 55 pounds. When I finally arrived at my room I was exhausted. I still only was able to sleep for four hours.

In the moring I met up with Ayako and had my first Japanese meal...and of course it was ramen. Its very good here. I also realized that Japanese women wear high heels. All the time. In the rain, at the beach, at work, at the supermarket, everywhere you look, they are in heels. I boarded a train at 3:00 and arrived in Sendai at 5:45 where I was met by my trainer, a proper British gentleman in his early 30's named Sam (actually he's really 25, but theres something about male pattern baldness that can make a person look old. One student was sure he was in his 40's). He in turn taught me all I needed to know about teaching in 3 days, and then I was left to my own devices as my manager got transfered four days after I arrived. It was just me all alone in Japan.