Moon Viewing Parties!

They are AWESOME.

I just got back from two moon viewing parties. They usually happen after the fall equinox and HP's two schools had them on the same night.

School A (the high academic one): Tall grass/wildflower arrangement, sushi, sanshin music (with electric guitar solos, which was pretty epic), mochi, toasts, and people sitting at a long table. We stayed for about an hour.

Classy to the max with a little bit of rock 'n roll thrown in.

Party B: Sanshin music by three somewhat toasted dudes, party games, totally plastered attempts at folk dancing (oh my god so great), at least three kegs, tarps spread on the ground in the courtyard, and AN ENTIRE GOAT. We stayed for the whole night.

You know what I did? I ATE GOAT SASHIMI.

RAW. GOAT.

I ATE YOU

Okinawa is turning me into such a badass. I am so pumped.

There was a game where you had to guess who it was based on the three secrets the emcee read from the slip of paper, from easiest to hardest. (he could read my handwriting, but had trouble with HP's HA BEST AT WRITING) My three secrets were:
1. I do not wear glasses
2. I like Okinawa Pro Wrestle
3. I am in the KGB! (Courtesy of Masashi-sensei, who I had told that I was part russian and had a gun permit.)

HP couldn't think of a third "secret," so Masashi-sensei scribbled "I LOVE MASASHI-SENSEI KISS KISS" in english across the bottom and it was great. They're notorious around the school, apparently. They're like two crazy people teaching kids english and they are total ridiculosity-bros. AND Masashi-sensei is his direct supervisor and I'm pretty sure that there is photographic evidence of Masashi chasing HP around yelling "HARD GAY HOOOO ADAM KISS KISS" at least twice.

HARD GAY HOOOOOO

And I totally got invited to like, every drinking party and school event ever by all the staff, who asked the english teachers how to say it so that they could tell me how much they liked me and I spoke in Japanese to people and it was so chill. Seriously. Tarps and kegs and a stage and a goat. Best. Party. Ever.

Unless you're the goat.

Also, it is really late and I might be drunks.

First contact

HP is safely entrenched in Tokyo for orientation, exhausted and nervous but out-of-his-mind excited.

Elsa is excelling at outdoor-only potty training.

I only have five or six more boxes of stuff left in my apartment.

I plan on taking a long, looong shower tonight and scrubbing the hell out of my sweaty I-just-moved-my-entire-life-into-boxes skin.

Small things make me feel a lot better.

Statement of Purpose

This blog is meant as a resource.

I started panicking a little when I saw how few resources there are out there for JET spouses. Sure, there's the embassy, your spouse and (if you're really hard up) Skype. And going through the JET forums wasn't any more productive, either - most of it was asking about healthcare and children.

I'm going to want a job.

I'm going to want to talk to people.

I'm going to want to go to supermarkets and shop.

And I know I don't want to go crazy doing it.

I've heard wonderful things about the JET program, but I've heard just as much about bored-to-tears SOs who spent all their time in the house or talking online to friends thousands of miles away. The loneliness and anxiety is understandable, sure - but I know that I don't want to burden my husband, also having just moved to Japan, by bottling it up until I'm like a volcano, spewing incoherent overly-emotional nonsense all over him.

I'm going to go out and talk to people in my (as of right now) very broken Japanese. I bought Rosetta Stone, ironically enough from a JET participant who turned down his acceptance due to the earthquakes. Also, I can now read and write Hiragana pretty confidently, which means close to nothing when you have no idea what the words mean. But progress, my good man! Progress!

I'll post language resources and learning games. I'll talk about the draining process of bringing over a pet and getting a visa. I guarantee that there will be posts to the idea of "WHERE AM I WHAT AM I DOING OH GOD WHAAAT" and an equal number of morose, homesick posts that will make you nauseous with their melodramatic sentimentality.

There will also be hilarity, I'm sure. I'm not the most coordinated person, but I make up for it with enthusiasm, so at the very least, I will serve as entertainment for the Japanese people. And, hopefully, readers who can laugh at the things I get myself or HP into.

I will eat all the food. ALL OF IT. And then tell you what it is, whether you want to hear it or not. Look forward to a spectacular amount of food posts. And supermarket guidelines for when you want to attempt Japanese cooking. Which I will also post on, if I ever figure out the conversion to metric cooking measurements.

I'll post about the nitty-gritty stuff, too, like housing and visas and transportation. And how my relationship with HP changes as our intense first year married gets infinitely more stressful.

There will also be cute pictures of my dog to counteract my grumblings about life, love, and the mass transit system.

In the end, though, I want this to be a place where significant others, husbands, wives, and even the people staying in the States can have a place to ask questions and bitch freely about their frustrations and worries. Moving anywhere with only your spouse to depend on takes its toll on your mental health, relationship, and way of life. It's terrifying, and it's exciting. It fluctuates daily, especially for those who don't have the happy talent of masking their nervousness with idiocy, like I do. And I hope that this blog becomes a way of staying stable and busy and sane.

But ultimately, I want people in my situation to know that they're not alone.

And, on a more selfish level, that I'm not alone either.

Start this bad boy like a car engine

Hello, blogosphere.

My name is Haz, and in a little over three months, I will be moving to Japan.

Holy. Fuck.