The Great PNG Post

Ahhhh. It's good to be home. Honestly coming back into modern first-world civilization has been a bit jarring, but I'm adjusting quickly. For those of you who may be lost, I just spent the last two weeks in the country of Papua New Guinea, quite literally in the middle of nowhere in the jungle (and on the beach). The purpose of the trip was to see firsthand the building of an elementary school that we funded with money raised from performing the musical. I'm not sure I can yet sum up the experience into words, I'm still digesting a lot of what I saw and did. I can say though that it was a pretty eye-opening experience. I can also say I will never again take indoor plumbing for granted.

So, I'll give you all a photo tour.

Getting to and from PNG is a chore. I took a 1 hour train to Niigata, where we took a bus to Tokyo, which took about 5ish hours. We then hopped on a plane for about 7 hours to Port Moresby, the capital. Then we hopped on another plane to Lae, only about a 1 hour flight. Upon arriving at the Lae airport, we had a little mini welcome ceremony.

And here we are exhausted and looking pretty darn wrecked, but happy:

We then piled onto the van you see in the pic and drove 45 minutes to our hotel for that night. All together I was in transit for over 24 hours.

After napping for about 3 hours, our guides took us to a mini sort of zoo in Lae, which was pretty cool. We got to see some cool animals in their natural habitats:

We also got to hold a black python. Look, ma! Look what I found!


We ate a picnic lunch of sandwiches at the zoo, and included in the lunch was a variety of fruit, including these wonders, known to the people as "Rumberton." You peel the outside spikey skin and then use your teeth to scrape/suck off the inside fleshy goodness from a rather large seed.


I must say, PNG has ruined fruit for me forever. A banana that has ripened on the tree is in a completely different universe from the crap that the grocery store tells us is "bananas." I stuffed myself the entire two weeks with fresh pineapple, mango, guava, starfruit, rumberton, coconut and oranges.

This is a female cassowary, which is an emu-like bird native to PNG.


And the creature no PNG zoo can go without -- an outrageously giant croc. This one was nearly 20 ft long. The zoo keeper stuck a stick in the cage to rile the animal, and I must say it was pretty impressive.


You've been warned:


The zoo also had a lot of nice birds, including some awesome talking cockatoos.

The next day we got up bright and early and took a 6 hour boat ride down the coast to our final destination, the villiage of Saigara in the Waria Valley. We took two boats with an outboard motor, one for us and one for our stuff. This is a photo I took of the other boat. One of my favorite guys, Sam, has his hands up.


A beautiful place for a rest stop:


We stopped and had another picnic lunch on a small island. It was crazy beautiful. Tsuneo, our one Japanese team member is pictured below (this was his 5th year going to PNG).


My hair, towards the end of the journey was almost as epic as the journey itself.



Then, we were given a proper Saigara welcome:

With of course a lot of dancing:

The elementary school kids for whom we built the school:


The flowers and butterflies of PNG are like something out of dream.


Fiona, chillin' with the kids.


This is Yahwehjah, aka Yahweh. Isn't she beautiful?


And my homeboy, Kamowah.


We had quite a bit of downtime in Saigara, so we did a lot of goofing off. Here is Fiona, of the Shetland Isles, in rare form.


And because I simply must share this with the world, her Louie Armstrong impression.



We went to see the mobile lumber mill one day, which was pretty interesting. Mobile mills are more ecologically friendly, as they don't require clearing large portions of forest to build a stationary mill and they allow you to choose which tree you'll use and then fell it in which ever direction is least damaging to the forest around it.


Me and Yahweh, and the mill site.


Sam and a view of the Waria river.


Deep into the heart of darkness:


Maybe dark isn't the right word.


On our trek back from the mill, we got a little thirsty. Sam turns to the young man beside him (maybe 17 or 18 years old?) and suggests he get some coconuts for us. He then scales a 40 foot coconut tree and knocks a bunch of coconuts down. This took him less than 3 minutes.


A big spider next to the river. From back legs to front legs he measures about 7 inches. He is also smaller than the huntsman spider I got to know quite well, who liked to chill in the girl's outhouse.


One of the many giant grasshoppers that were everywhere.


One day we went down to the villiage in Saigara and watched the ladies make grass skirts and the woven bags that EVERYONE in PNG carries called "Billems." Here are the ladies making the skirts:


Useful feet:


Making yellow dye for the skirts.


Adorable children.


Can't have too many pictures of those.


Coconuts.


Dancing in the night.


Cool stick bug.


Definitely cool.


After a week in Saigara we went to Bau village, which was right on the beach. We of course were welcomed again with bright costumes and dancing.


This is the guest house we stayed in at Bau. All open air, so we sleep under mosquito nets.


Possibly my favorite picture, because it sums up Bau so well.


Hermit crabs where EVERYWHERE on the beaches. I loooooved the things, so I was always picking them up and toting 'em around with me.

One day at Bau we took the boat to a small satellite island and went snorkeling in the reefs and had a picnic lunch. Snorkeling was definitely my favorite part, and I plan on investing on a snorkel and flippers in the near future and doing it as much as possible.

The island:
Little man dressed up to greet us to the island (one or two families have houses on the island).


Me all war-painted up (its mud that was put on my face by an old native when we arrived).


The island was definitely my favorite place.


The next day we presented school supplies to the children at a school near Bau. They in turn presented us with gifts of beads and billems.


This is one of their teachers, explaining one of the rituals.


We also paid a visit to the school at Toyare, where the team built the classroom pictured below last year. We brought school supplies and were treated to a dance.


On the last day (Thursday) we went back to Saigara for the dedication of the beautiful classroom we built!


Singing the Papua New Guinea national anthem. Notice the Japanese flag also flying!


Uniformed cuties.


Our farewell from Saigara celebration. More beautiful dances.


And the final goodbye from Bau.


Everything is still kind of a blur at this point, and I am currently still running on 3 hours of sleep I got Friday night and a 2 hour nap I took today (it is now Sunday, almost 8PM), so I apologize for the short explanations and lack of eloquence. All I can say right now is that the entire experience completely blew me away, and that the beauty of the country and the kindness of the people there is something that can never forget. It feels really good to make the world a better place. :-)

神林はきれいだよね〜

I've got a crapload of stuff to upload, which I am going to attempt to do all this week. First, I'll share with you how freaking gorgeous it is where I live. Even though it rains/snows a lot, that doesn't at all subtract from the beauty.

First off are some pictures I took around Christmas of last year. No snow yet...



The silver building is "Paru Parku" (Pal Park), which is where I teach my eikaiwa class (adult English conversation class).


Next up is a pond in Kamihayashi called 大池 (Ohike). In winter, a buttload of swans from Siberia descend on the Murakami area. They particularly like this pond, and they've learned that its the spot to get a free meal -- on weekends the place is packed with people toting bags of bread.



Again, so those pictures were all taken around Christmastime. A mere 3 or 4 weeks later, however, someone flipped the switch:

And holy crap, did it snow...

大池 again, this time with snow.




Cooooooooooooome and geeeeeeeeeeeeet iiiiiiiiiiit.



I think this is what the person who invented the word "cluster@#$%" had in mind...

Probably my favorite thing about where I live is that I am equally far from the mountains (pictured earlier) as I am from the beach. Takes me 10 minutes or less by car to be at the Japan Sea, 20 or so to be in the mountains on my snowboard.


日本海 aka the Japan Sea. The tetrapods are used in many places throughout Japan to prevent erosion.


Awashima, a little island off the Murakami coast.


Another lovely shot of the Murakami sunset. You can never have too many of those.

So, I will finish this post by saying you all should come and see it for yourself, cause these pictures really don't do it justice.

Long Overdue Tokyo Post

As I stated in a previous post (oh, over a month ago now) I went to Tokyo for New Years. Now, New Years in Japan is a GIANT deal. Its the biggest holiday in Japan (kinda like Christmas in the States), and so theres a lot going on at this time of year. Strangely enough, however, Tokyo is much emptier at this time of year than normal. This is because Japanese people go home (wherever home is) to spend New Years with their families, which means there is a mass exodus out of Tokyo. So imagine these pictures 10 times more crowded, then you've got Tokyo.

We started off by checking into our capsule hotel in Shinjuku. Capsule hotels are a Japan-only phenomenon. Check out my sweet capsule:


Basically its just enough room to lay down comfortably. Theres a big communal shower/bath/sauna (I of course stayed in a ladies only place), and you get a locker to keep your things in. It was a cool experience, and I'm glad I did it, but I'm not sure I would again. Although, it was crazy cheap (about 40 dollars a night, which is super cheap in the heart of Shinjuku).

Next, we were starving, so we (Richie, Troy, Steve and I) stopped for some sushi. Put me on the record as saying Niigata sushi blows Tokyo sushi out of the water. That's right, I said it.


Later we did some exploring in Shinjuku, and found a little shinto shrine tucked away in a back alley. That's one of the things I love about Tokyo. One minute you're surrounded by lights, noise and hostess clubs, and the next you're in a quiet spot looking at an ancient shrine or temple. Its really cool to see such opposites coexist.

Foxes are the messengers of the gods, so this shrine had multiple fox statues. The thing tied to his ear is an omikuji, or a fortune. Everyone at the New Year pays for a little omikuji, which will tell you what your luck will be like in money, work, family, love -- everything. After you read your fortune, you can either take it with you, or leave it at the shrine in the hopes that the gods will either make your fortune come true (if you got a good fortune) or keep it from coming true (if you got a bad fortune).

Omikuji close-up.

We then headed off to the famous Shibuya to check out the busiest intersection in the world. It doesn't look so busy here again because Tokyo is sort of empty (by comparison) at the New Year. Still a cool sight to see.



We ran into this dog and it's old man in Shibuya. The dog's name is Love (Ra-bu in engrish), and as you can see it could RIDE A FREAKING BICYCLE. The dude would hold out some food and the dog would pedal up to get it. Someone get this dog an agent.


Day 2 got started a little late, especially since I somehow managed to lose my bra between my locker and the shower that morning (the only one I brought). So I made a morning trek to the local skivvy shop to get something new. Let me just say now that Japanese bras suck. They are all really cutesy (covered in lace, ribbons, beads -- not my style) and retardedly padded. I found something that would work at least for the next couple of days, but that ended up rubbing me raw in a few places. I cant wait to go back home to shop so I can find clothes that will actually fit me.

After wandering randomly for a bit we headed to Meiji Jingu, which is possibly the most famous shrine in Japan. At the new year literally 100's of thousands (if not millions) of people stream through this shrine to do something called hatsumoude, or the first shrine visit of the new year. Meiji jingu is not the only place to do this. Any shrine will do. But Meiji is probably the most popular. At the shrine, people basically pray that the next year will be a good one, and they give donations to the gods. These donations can be in any amount, but 5 yen and 50 yen coins are especially good luck. Theres a special area fenced off, and people throw their coins/bills there, where the monks make the rounds and pick up the dough. I literally saw more than a few 1 man yen bills, which is roughly equal to 100 dollars, so some people really fork it out.

Here Richie celebrates Shinto. These are the torii at the entrance to the shrine.

And here is the front entrance gate. Notice the pictures of the mice next to the radishes. This is the year of the mouse (its mouse in Japan, not rat), so you see mice everywhere.

Before you enter the gates shown above, you have to wash your hands and your mouth in a fountain nearby to cleanse yourself. you wash your hands first, then your mouth (by putting a little water in your mouth and spitting it out), then you clean off the handle of the cup thingy by running the remaining water down the handle. There's a lot of ritual here.

A nice pic of Steve, Troy and I in front of the main building at Meiji. In front of this building is where everyone throws their money.

This is the awesome view upon exiting Meiji Jingu. So, you have to walk a little ways into the woods (about 5-10 minutes) to get in and out of the shrine. While you're there, you can't see the city at all, and its easy to forget you're right in the middle of Tokyo. I really like how in this picture you can see the giant skyscraper through the traditional torii.

Later that evening we had shabu shabu back in Shinjuku. Shabu shabu is this brilliant Japanese food that basically involves boiling veggies, meat and seafood at your table, dipping it in sauce and chowing down. It doesn't sound thrilling, but trust me, it is. Below is proof of just how thrilling:


After hopping around the city to quite a few places, we ended up at a famous club in Roppongi, called "Gas Panic". Roppongi is the only place to go in Tokyo on New Year's Eve, cause as Tokyo is pretty empty, thats where ALL the foreigners go. And oh my gosh, it was indeed a ridiculous sea of gaijin. Had there been a fire in this club, we all would have died. No question about it.

Here Steve rocks the afro and the finest white-man dance I've ever witnessed.

And here I am, shakin' my thang. Dancing is funnnnn.

For the most part, I didn't take pictures for the rest of the trip, but we mostly did a lot of sitting around on our butt/eating delicious Tokyo grub/going shopping in Harajuku. Yes, that's right, it rocked. Best. New Year. Ever.

I am famous in Niigata

So the musical was in the main Niigata newspaper, the Niigata Nippon. They took photos at the Murakami show and even interviewed me (in Japanese I might add) after the show. The basically just asked how I felt about the show (I said I was very nervous, but very excited and happy to be doing it), and they asked if any of my students came to see it (yes, they did), and the usual questions -- where do you live, where do you work, how old are you, etc. Here is the awesomeness: see for yourself. :-)