I’d like to introduce my favorite Japanese food, gyutan. Gyutan is Japanese for beef tongue and is eaten in high-end restaurants. While Americans typically eat ribeyes or filets when dining out, Japanese eat gyutan. I found the story of how gyutan became a delicacy fascinating: prior to World War II almost no one in Kakuda […]

The people of Kakuda speak not only maintstream Japanese (the Tokyo dialect), but also their own dialect, referred to as Kakuda-ben. It is especially common among the older generation. Legend has it that the local dialect evolved out of necessity. Kakuda is located in northern Japan (roughly of equivalent latitude to Greenfield) where the winters […]

Last Saturday we celebrated Halloween in style in Fujio, Kakuda. We played Halloween games such as pin-the-eyepatch-on-the-pirate. We also had a costume contest, but the evening’s highlight was the trick-or-treating. I went as kodzure ookami which is literally means lone wolf with cub, but is more often associated with the image of a samurai holding […]

After leaving the Oda matsuri, I went to the Chorus festival at Kakuda Elementary School. This year was the festival’s 40th anniversary and it turned out to be an entertaining show full of surprises. I highly recommend taking a look at the video of Kakuda Elementary School students on my facebook. Feel free to add […]

A matsuri (the Japanese word for festival) was held in Oda, Kakuda today. LIke most festivals in Kakuda, the Oda had an excellent turnout of people of all ages. Taiko drums as well as other instruments performed. They served natto mochi (a kind of rice cake covered in fermented soy beans) and a pork soup […]

I would like to welcome all of you to the blog I will keep during my time as the Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kakuda, Japan. This first post will serve as a concise introduction for the blog itself and over the next several months I will be creating posts on my background, my involvement […]