Thursday, June 29, 2006

Oh! We're going to Kee-oh-toe! Oh! Back to the city...


Here's the group- Ashley, Adam, Betsy and Bob whose appearance in this photo suggests he's watched a cursed video and has seven days before either:
a) he makes a friend watch it and thus they succumb to the curse and die horribly instead of he, or
b) he succumbs to the curse and one of his frinds finds his body, him having died horribly. Either way I feel like I'm going to get caught up in something akin to a Japanese horror movie. Why couldn't I just like romantic comedies instead? Posted by Picasa

Reflections in Kyoto station. There. That's the arty bit done with. Posted by Picasa

You aren't allowed to take photos inside Nijo Castle. So I, er, I, er...  Posted by Picasa

Undercover agents getting it wrong or Geisha on a mission? You decide... Posted by Picasa

Nightlife! By a river! We're not in Okayama anymore...  Posted by Picasa

Geisha Geisha Goo, Where are you? We've got some non-prostitution-rather-simple-family-entertainment work to do now...
Searching for Geisha at nightime in Gion.Posted by Picasa

Look! It's the sight you never thought you'd see! Japanese people rummaging through crap to find bargains at the Kitano Tenmangu shrine... Posted by Picasa

Abnormal service resumes.

The week following the beach party had it's high points and it low points. High points included attendance at our English Converation class increasing by a whole third! Yes, 33 percent more students attended! Word has finally spread about how good we are. 6 students came instead of 4...

Oji-san (Nao-chan and Papa-san's 72 year old friend) has been trying to get me to come to dinner at his house for a very, very long time, and up until now outside forces have conspired against this. But last Thursday it finally came off, and Oji-san made a real effort- lots and lots of sushi, niku-nashi yaki soba (yaki-soba without the meat- a VERY rare occurrence in Japan) and alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. With the food Nao-chan and I had made prior there was too much on the table but we had another evening of laughter and alcoholism. And other huests at the party included a high-school girl whose English was better than most Japanese people I have met...

The weekend was one of the first lasts if that makes sense. I keep forgetting that I am leaving this town in 4 weeks (destination: unknown) but managed to keep it in my head that this would be my last trip to Kyoto for a very long time to come, and a good trip it was. I broke my journey by staying at Adam's on the Friday night (kaiten sushi for tea- yum!) and on Saturday morning with surprisingly gorgeous weather Bob, Ashley, Adam and I converged on Okayama station, and thanks to the wonder of the fastest of the shinkansen we were in Kyoto in 65 minutes, meeting Betsy and wondering around the station taking pictures of each otehr with the architecture as backdrop. And having people film us because clearly foreigners in Kyoto are a rarity these days (pease note intense sarcasm).

Our hotel, the Kyoto Traveller's Inn was right next to the lovely Heian Jingu, the shrine featured in "Lost In Translation" in that shot where the girl goes to Kyoto at 5am. But we didn't bother going there, we just walked past it numerous times instead. We did however head to Kinkakuji- the Golden Temple- which was stunning as ever in the raging sunshine, and then, FINALLY!!!, I made it to Nijo castle. They close the gates at 4 and on my last 2 attempts the traffic has worked against me, delaying my arrival until 4:10. Nijo is possibly the most authentic castle I've been to in Japan with it's Nightingale floorboards (all of which squeak in a way that resembles bird-song- an alarm system to protect from Ninja) and its austere, if faded murals and decorations. Other castles have either been transformed into museums (Matsue, Osaka, Nagoya) while others remain as shells, albeit beautiful and well-restored ones (Himeji).

After this bit of history Adam, Ashley and I went on a guided tour of the Geisha districts taking in various areas in and around Gion. Our guide was interesting and his knowledge (much of it information passed from local people) was informative, but all of that was outshadowed by the fact that we repeatedly caught fleeting glimpses of Geisha turning corners and slipping away through busy streets, this in turn helping us appreciate the mystery and romance that surrounds the Geisha. It was only after the tour, once on our way back to the hotel and then again in the evening after dinner on a late night wonder around the tour area that we got a real look at some Geisha.

Sunday saw the weather turn to gloomy but our plans didn't change. We headed to a flea market in Tenmangu shrine where Betsy and Ashley bought used kimono for a minimal price and where we all succumbed to one bargain or another. Lunch was for a second day at a buffet restaurant Bob and Betsy recommended (1000yen for all you can eat) and soon we were heading to the Kyoto Handicrafts Centre which was hugely atrocious except for some lovely woodblock prints and lacquerware. Nothing there actually seemed to be have been made by hand (unless the t-shirts were hand-sewn in sweatshops in China) so we left the place only to bitch tirelessly about it while we set off home to our various parts of Okayama.

And now is the week in which the goodbyes start. But the trauma of that will need a separate post- what's happening to my eyes?!?

Monday, June 26, 2006

Beach R and R the Tottori way.


Amy takes a break on one of Tottori's beach beauty spots. All we needed was a group of drunken girls on a hen do wearing penis-deelyboppers and the Blackpool feeling would have been complete... Posted by Picasa

Rocks in Tottori. Like the Giant's Causeway but in miniature and in Japan and with different rock patterns. So not really like the Giant's Causeway at all. D'oh. Posted by Picasa

Hidden coves and purdy sundowns. The view from the temple near Kozomi beach. Posted by Picasa

One more cry for help ignored. Dying on the beach in Tottori. But enough about my camera... Posted by Picasa

We had to make a sacrifice in order to maintain the good weather. Sorry Amy, but you ensured sunny skies on Sunday... Posted by Picasa

Friday, June 23, 2006

Back to the future.

Two weekends ago was the Official Gossip-High Point (OGHP) of the year, otherwise known as the Tottori Beach Party. Indeed even 10 months after the last one I was still hearing of new stories of who-kissed-whom-to make-who-jealous and who-did-what-with-who-they-shouldn't-have. So expectations were high, and personally I wasn't disappointed.

Mr Bob and I headed out from Takebe expecting maybe an hour an half's driving to reach the party site on Kozomi beach, but the journey took us three hours during which time we recieved phone calls from people who had already seen us at the party (??). It seemed the drink was flowing very early on. And when we did get there it seemed more like the Okayama JET beach party in Tottori as almost every person you would bump into was from Okayama.

The set up was this: one big covered dancing area with live DJs (dead ones are never as good as you hope), beach hut with bar, tents selling hippy clothes/ doing tattoos/ selling food and drink and a chill out tent (which I only briefly looked at from outside not understanding). The accommodation was a series of "bungalows" which were each a single tatami room with attached bathroom. Unfortunately on each of these rooms the bathroom door was high on frosted glass. Put in backwards. So as you went to the loo you couldn't see anyone outside. But from outside the bathroom you could see pretty much everything. Nice. But the rooms were plenty spacious and comfortable and had enough futons that we could discard one when a member of our group decided she wanted to see her dinner again. Oh dear.

And the Tottori crew were there in force so there was a lot of catching up to do. To names names would be unfair, so here are some of the highlights/ bizarre moments:
* one unexpected coupling which saw a swift dissolution 3 hours later. After being witnessed by most of the most of the party;
* one pair of sandals stolen from a room by a girl declaring, "I want my sandals back", even though they weren't hers;
* one black eye due to a drunken falling-face-first onto a rock incident (which apparently was given a much wilder explanation on the night);
* three lost mobile phones after a drunken fully-clothed night swimming session;

Friday night passed into Saturday and things seemed to settle down. A huge group of headed to an onsen (and got slightly lost on the way there) and then afterwards Amy, Bob, Betsy and I went exploring and found a secluded beach with pretty caves. At which point we decided to write SOS in the sand and pretend to be dead for photos because really we are mentally about 12 years old. And then we half buried Amy in a crucifixion pose and took more photos with Betsy preparing to stab her bamboo and Bob mopping her brow. I feel the flames of hell licking my feet as I type. Ooh, toasty. Perhaps in fact it was God's revenge that my camera went kaputt appoximately 20 seconds after this incident. D'oh!

Well, the evening was upon us and soon the music was getting better and better. Just after 7 Christine and I decided that we wanted to dance and took up pole position in the centre of the empty dance floor, a position I didn't leave for about 4 hours, and by the time midnight came I suddenly decided I'd done enough manic dancing and sore feet and all I should get home.

Sunday was a fairly relaxed day and was looking to be quite restful until I received a call from a new friend, Joa, who invited me down to Kurashiki for dinner and a movie with friends. He's also British and gay and he works for the company Chad used to work for, so we have friends in common. It was a good evening with Scott being his usual funny self and Joa and Zoe both being good company. And on the way back I surprised myself and Efi by driving from Kurashiki to mine in under an hour. Oops. Having first driven on the pavement on Sunday and then speeding past the ratings on the speedometer I think I may have to start being a bit more careful...

Thursday, June 22, 2006

The whaling issue.

Japan, together with a cluster of other countries, has a notorious attitude towards whales. It contually pushes for a return to commercial whaling, albeit "sustainable" whaling (nothing wrong with that you say) and has exploited a loophole in the current anti-whaling moratorium in order to slay whale for "scientific purposes". This wouldn't be so hard to believe if they weren't killing so many and the bounty wasn't turning up in the supermarket as sashimi, in children's school dinners and more recently in dog food.

So I wondered what people around thought about it. And before I got a chance to ask my query was answered. Yesterday I went to my smallest elementary school. Only 4 students, tucked away in the mountains of a dying village. The lesson was days of the week and as there were so few kids we ran through everything really quickly, so we practised new animals and played an extra game. As I showed the kids the new animals I asked them what they were. Some they got ("rabbit!" "Lion!"), some they didn't (zebra, giraffe). Some they guessed at. And the final picture was a picture of a whale. "What's this?" I asked. The kids looked confused. Suddenly the 5th grade boy's eyes lit up. He shouted out his brainwave- "SEAFOOD!". At which point the principal and I fell over laughing.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Come on baby, light my fire (work).


Adam goes all Harry Potter releasing streams of light from the tips of his fingers. Or perhaps he's just playing with sparklers. Whichever, Betsy runs for cover... Posted by Picasa

Betsy plays with fire (works). Well, after Trivial Pursuit you have to do something drastic to raise the bar... Posted by Picasa

Reminders...

The weeks are positively flying by right now, and with 5 weeks left there is so much to do. Like look for further work (d'oh!). But the past few weeks have been pretty full and I must take a moment to breath, relax and process the events. Come with me on a tedious journey into the last fortnight...

The week after the villa was marked by a trip to Bob's and a birthday bash for Jeremy at Wakaba where Shoko proved once again how hilarious she is (that week's eikaiwa had been one to remember. But the gym is adding to all the excitement. Katsuyama's gym opened at the beginning of May and is lovely and shiny and new. I have been getting fit and healthy and have been suitably adjusting my lifestyle thanks to a cross-trainer and a treadmill. Every day I count those burned off calories and everyday I feel a little bit closer to Karen Carpenter. We've only just begun, just like me they long to be close to you etc. The other good thing about the gym is that they change the music every week. We've had hip-hop week, gangsta week (this wasn't good), gay week (the CD played popular chart hits including Kylie and Dannii back to back), pop week, and now we're on 70's soul week which may just be the best...

That weekend too was a good one as we all headed to Bob's for a night of food and Trivial Pursuit. Adam and I met early to go running in the afternoon sun (and we ran! For an hour!) before being joined by Betsy, Amy, Vicki and Bob and preparing for an evening of wildly undisciplined Trivial Pursuit. As it became clear fairly soon that no-one was going to get anywhere quickly we decided to help each other with the answers. Example clue: Betsy (to me), "his name begins with J and ends in 'immy Carter'". Well, Team Betsy won and to celebrate we all went to Family Mart (not-quite-as-good-as-Lawson convenience store) in Efi, with Adam and Betsy fighting over who got to sit in the back.

The evening passed and the morning followed (as it tends to do), and we started the day with a trip to the onsen with it's hot springs. This is always relaxing, but as the day's heat was blistering anyway it was at times slightly too hot. And we carried on our day by going to the city, having lunch in an organic cafe near the railtracks, buying inappropriately priced foods at the import store and finally splitting up, me taking Bob home and finishing the curry he'd made the night before.

One other thing before I finish this wildly dreary account of recent events. I haven't been sleeping too well lately. I think the gym has removed my general sluggishness which unfortunately means that I am alert until about 1 every morning. It seems that on Monday of last week I was also alert at 5am as I suddenly woke up knowing what was going on around me. "Oh, it's an earthquake" I thought. "And not a strong one". And with the apartment shaking I put my head back down on the pillow and tried to settle back to sleep. Well, it was nothing like the one I was in last March...

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Growth and development.

Sometimes I question why I came to Japan. Sometimes I wonder what I've learned here and whether or not I've grown as a person. Sometimes I wonder if my tastes and interests have diversified and sometimes I worry that they haven't. Sometimes I worry that I haven't used the opportunity to develop new skills and broaden my horizons.

And then I get on my bike and cycle to the supermarket while listening to my walkman and typing and sending an email on my mobile phone. Two years ago I couldn't turn a corner and could regularly be found in rivers/ gullies/ crashed into walls.

I am thus sufficiently developed.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006


The drive home was at times alarming... Posted by Picasa

Another pretty building on the town's main street. Posted by Picasa

Dutch Iris from above. Posted by Picasa

Bringing British culture (pronounced cul-cha) to the oldest working school in Japan. Betsy makes a run for it in rounders. Posted by Picasa

Detail in a local shrine. The rest of looked like it was about to crash to the ground. Posted by Picasa

The red houses of Fukiya Posted by Picasa

Monday, June 12, 2006

Violence! Stabbings! Poison! Murder!

It has taken me until now to come to terms with the events that occurred on the weekend of June 3rd so traumatic they were. The memory alone still sends chills down my spine. The week itself had been a busy one- dinner at Wakaba on Monday with Nao-chan, conversation class on Tuesday, watching an orchestra rehearsal on Wednesday with Fukushima sensei, Joyfull in Takahashi with NP on Thursday and dinner at Nao-chan's on Friday night- and I recall feeling tired when Saturday morning arrived, perhaps indeed feeling a bit tense. Saturday was to be our last group Villa trip of the year and it was taking place at the villa in Fukiya village, Takahashi- a converted soy sauce factory in a village in the middle of nowhere it seemed. So we all set off on what seemed like an endless journey to get there.

I met Vicki in Takahashi and the two of us followed the simple guide- drive up the 180, turn left and it's a few minutes drive away. But this was no ordinary few minutes drive. It ended up taking around an hour and 20 minutes on a road that was laden with maps, none of which bore the legend "You Are Here" in Japanese or English. But eventually after careening along cliff-top roads and trundling over rickety bridges we were finally in the small village of Fukiya.

Fukiya itself is a very pretty town, and an area that made its name manufacturing iron sulphate. Perhaps because of this most of the buildings are coloured a reddish-brown, and souvenir shops sell papers coloured with red pigment as well as the usual Japanese gifts- wooden shoes, sweets and dried squid. And with an hour before we could check in the assembled group of Amy, Bob, Jess, Danielle, Bec, Steve, Vicki and I wandered around to look at things and take pictures.

Our first surprise was waiting for us when we finally entered the villa. A mukade, a poisonous Japanese centipede was waiting in the doorway. Mukade are large, have a very strong and painful bite and can kill children and pensioners, neither of which were we but we were still keen to get rid of it. So we set to boiling water to throw over it, and 10 minutes later one was boiling in a pan dancing in death with the bubbling of the water. Boiling water is the recommended way to kill these things as it destroys their eggs too.

Given the horror, and the fact that we were hungry, Amy and I realised that we didn't have enough rice to go with dinner, so we went shopping. Only for the first shop not to sell rice but to point us to another shop where the shop owner had possibly been eaten by mukade and failed to make an appearance whereby the owner of a souvenir shop came into that second shop to tell us to come to his shop even though we told him we wanted rice which he didn't sell. So after 35 minutes of looking round his shop he asked us how much rice we wanted, then disappeared and 15 minutes later came back with a plastic bag of rice. It appeared that this rice had been commandeered from someone's personal stash, but we were grateful and at 400 yen it seemed like a snip. So we thanked him profusely and he gave us guides to Fukiya and gave us lots of information in Japanese about the area and the sights to see. We should have asked about Mukade killing now I think about it...

Soon Adam, Ashley, Ilana and Amy had arrived and we began cooking the evening meal, a wild variety of foods- curries, lasagne, shepherd's pie and tacos to name a few. Only to be interrupted by more mukade. This time the pans were full, so I set to them with a handy coal scuttle. And as if they weren't enough, during the after dinner games (which involved swearing, charades and lots of loud singing) we were set upon by giant spiders.

Even going to bed became an ordeal as rooms had to be thoroughly checked for mukade. Indeed, three more were flung through the windows before the lights went out. And as I lay in my bed I felt something shimmying up my arm. BABY IN MY BED! Without waking Adam and Bob I managed to eject it but it seemed none of us were to sleep well and we awoke at 7 o'clock to another predator by the door... Murder is not the best way to start the day. And as Steve filled the onsen bath it seems we'd unintentionally killed another one, although the lukewarm water wasn't letting this one dance away.

After we checked out of the monster pit/ villa on Sunday we headed to what is apparently the oldest school in use in Japan (made of wood and held together by good wishes it would seem) and introduced the Aussie and American contingent among us to the wonderful British game of rounders before splitting up and heading home (or to Nickname Pending's in my case).

The nightmares are getting less and less, but sometimes when the curtains move in the evening breeze and the CD player misfires I think I can hear the death screams of those murderous mukade. And then I realise I can't because possibly only dogs and Mariah Carey can hear sounds as high pitched as those.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

The joy of shogakko

Today I am teaching 1st and 2nd grade students at elementary school. These kids range from 6-8 years old. I'm not one to gush about the kids, but today they are being hilarious and saying the most bizarre things.

In class:
Student (to me): che che
Me: Nihow
Student (to class): ARGH! Chris sensei knows Chinese

In the staff room:
Student: Chris sensei, are you a foriegner?
Me: Yes. Are you Japanese?
Student: ... ha ha.

Friday, June 02, 2006

The last weekend in pictures...


The ominous entrance to Iwami Ginzan- the silver mine in Shimane. Posted by Picasa

At Izumo Taisha- the approach to the main temples. Swooping birds and all. Posted by Picasa

Izumo Taisha. The bit at the back is closed off, but the whole place is serene and beautiful.  Posted by Picasa

Arty picture alert. Big straw rope at Izumo Taisha. People throw money up and presumably if it sticks it brings them luck.  Posted by Picasa

Taisha Eki- the train station at Izumo Taisha. More like a mansion. Little Efi sits to the right of the station, absorbing the atmosphere. And taking a well earned rest from the 5.5 hours of driving we'd done so far... Posted by Picasa