There's something in the fog...

Sometimes I wonder if my town was built on a leper colony using stolen gold, and fear that I must drive away before midnight and not return before one. But it's only on those days when the fog rolls in...

Sayonara 2006: Part 2

Karaoke is a mystical force. People arrive innocently hoping for a night of fun and pleasure, and start choosing their favourite songs, looking forward to that moment when they start to sing and their friends join in and everyone feels warmed by the bond of familiarity.

People relax with a drink or two, the conversation flows, everyone's happy, their guard is down...

And then the horror begins.

The pain intensifies and people screech out their demons...

But the booze continues to flow and something starts to happen. 

Mania ensues and a crazy excitement settles on the victims who start start to gyrate manically and with abandon to all kinds of noise...

Everyone is caught by the spell.

Then the phone rings and the counter staff tell you all your time is up, and you relocate to a bar where you tell the friendly Barbie-staff of all the crazyness that happened and all the things they missed.

And a man with his fingers in his fingers in his ears tries to shout over the loud music to ask you if you believe in Jesus.

And thus ends the tale of Adam's last night in Okayama, 8th July 2006, a night that started with a rained-off dinner-by-the-river (mutated into dinner at Amy-and-Herb's-place), led to karaoke madness and ended up in the Red Moon with high kicking to I will survive and rescuing each other from the ear-blocking God lover.

Sayonara 2006: Episode 1.

Naoshima is a bizarre and beautiful island in the Seto Inland sea. As part of Kagawa prefecture it is most famous for it's rather breathtaking artworks and natural beauty. The photo above is an example of one of the many artworks which lies around the Benesse Art Site area, this one being "Pumpkin" by Yayoi kasuma. Less famous is the fact that north of the island is owned by Mitsubishi and is used as a waste-processing plant. It is also the place where we had our annual sayonara party, staying overnight in accomodations next to the beach (to clarify, we stayed near the art site, NOT the waste-processing plant).

I chose to slum it in a traditional Mongolian tent. Tradition, it seems, includes beds with sturdy and comfortable matresses, electric lighting, heaters and a fridge. As well as essential pine furniture. I always knew I was a traditionalist at heart, although it did disappoint me that the traditional air-conditioning unit like the one in my apartment hadn't been installed.

The party was organised by our marvellous AJET committee, or rather by the president, Barbie, and co-social-chair, Nickname Pending (although Gretchen-Maria has been a recently adopted nickname, so perhaps she is no longer pending). Under assumed identities the 30 attendees enjoyed a rather large barbecue, salads, and fruits before someone found the karaoke machine and begged the owners to switch it on. Cue much screeching, gyrating and rolling around on the floor. And once I allowed someone else to have a go on the microphone there was also quality singing and a rather marvellous performance of "Like A Virgin" by Sarah (above).

As it tends to do, karaoke descends into dancing, courtesy of DJ Keisuke. Not DJ Bob-suke as was originally planned.

This didn't drive Adam up the wall so much as into the rafters.

Adam and I went for an evening walk which is when we first came upon the Pumpkin. So I decided to take a picture with Adam appearing to attack the pumpkin. Perhaps my camera decided to go all psychic, but it appears only to have captured the aura of Adam, rather than the true violence of the incident...

As the sun went down we stayed up, wandering the beach, dancing on tatami, watching England lose to Portugal (d'oh!) and many participants enjoyed a spot of wrestling. At which point I ran for the vending machines...

We went to the ChiChu art museum, which is rather fabulous, and unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) broke all the rules listed on the ticket (except for smoking. That's bad you know). We touched the walls (DAME YO!) We stood close to exhibits (DAME DESUNE!). I took photos (SO TOTALLY DAME IT'S UNBELIEVABLE!). We ate chocolate outside of the cafe (AAAAAAAAAARGH!) and then in a final act of rebellion I wrote on a piece of paper. Use of ink is just unbelievably rude. We were followed around by lab technicians/ oompah loompahs who were all the same size in the same clothes and were only distinguishable by their haircuts and English ability. It's a marvellous place though. See it if you have the chance.

N.B. "dame" (pronounced da-may) means "NO!!!!" in Japanese. "Yo!" and "desune" are quantifiers. OK yo?

The next day was a day of exploring and asking ourselves, "what is this supposed to be?" Having found such artworks as the wobbling After Eight mints with Adam on a walk the night before, Herb, Amy and I went back to explore. And it still made no sense.

After enjoying some more incongruous but rather enjoyable art exhibits (see above) we decided to have a change of scenery and headed to the world's most bizarre museum. The 007 museum on Naoshima, which exists solely because Naoshima is the setting for a meeting of the G8 in a Bond novel that was never made into a film. And the museum is filled with magazines with Bond articles, old Bond theme 7-inch singles and bizarre home-made paintings that were frankly useless.

But next to the Bond museum was possibly the most challenging art exhibit on the island. What did it mean? What did it suggest? Apocalypse now? Life after a collapse in society? Shower of shit in poshland? Rubbish dump behind a crap museum? Who knows...

Important anniversary

Saturday saw the passing of an important anniversary, the 10 year anniversary of the birth of a significant social movement which went on to change how a large portion of society saw themselves. Conversely credited and blamed for the rise in confidence and self-belief amongst young girls and the rise in girl gangs and girl-on boy violence, the rally-call of "Girl Power" characterised the fortunes of the union that charmed the world. The Spice Girls' "Wannabe" was released on July the 8th 1996, and Saturday marked 10 years since that glorious day when stereos across the UK screamed out, "I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want".

Here are the Spice Girls in their first Top Of The Pops appearance, appropriately enough via satellite link from... Japan.

Swallow Betty, SWALLOW!

It was as I walked out of class and turned the corner that I first heard the cackling laughter and shrill whoops and then my eyes were drawn to the forlorn figure that had fallen to the ground while everyone circled and pushed and shoved but never got closer. A poor swallow had strayed into the school building and possibly given itself concussion by trying to fly out of a closed window, ending up flat on it's back on the floor.

"Is it dead?", I asked. "No, no, no!", came the reply. "Perhaps it's sick," I suggested. "No, no, no!", the schoolgirls chanted in chorus as I reached down and scooped up the upturned bird. The little creature seemed comfortable perching on my finger and made no attempt to fly away. I wondered if it were in shock, but didn't know the word for this in Japanese. So after a brief spell of stroking it the girls asked me what it's name was. "Betty" came the reply. "BETTY?" "Yes, Betty". And with that one of the girls grabbed Betty from my finger and passed her round like a toy in a charity shop, until the bell for class rang and I took her back. "What should we do?" asked the girls. "I don't know, perhaps she wants water?", so with the girls trundling off to class I summoned a saucer of water for my charge and sat her in it hoping she would drink. Alas no. So I left her to rest, hoping that when I returned she would have recovered her strength and flown free with the other birds.

Twenty minutes later Betty was still sitting in the saucer of water, so I gently placed her back on my finger and carried her to where the other swallows were flying and swooping, hoping she would catch on and take-off. But no, she just kept looking at me, and I wondered if, like many a cartoon animal, she was going to start seeing me as her mother figure. But no. Seconds later she pooped in my hand and flew off.

Thanks Betty.

My, what unusual origami! Sorry, it's WHAT?

I came back from lunch one day recently to find this next to my desk. A vase with a sprig of unidentified tree and an apparent paper construction attached to it. The caretaker lady was very keen to show it to me.

Me: "Did you make it yourself? It's origami isn't it?"
Hatsumoto sensei: "No, no, it's from the garden."
Me: "Eh?"
Hatsumoto sensei: "It's a [insert unidentifiable Japanese words]"
Me: "Eh?"
Hatsumoto sensei (using gestures): "Susumebachi"
[Cue use of dictionary]
Me: "EEEEH?" (showing dictionary to Hatsumoto sensei)
Hatsumoto sensei: "Yes! Yes! There are larvae in it."
Me: "I'm scared!"
Vice Principal: "HA HA HA! The larvae are dead. Probably. HA HA HA!"
Me: "when you walk away..." [gestures violent smashing of said artefact]

And what is it? It's a bloody-bastard BEE HIVE. Next to my desk. The one thing that sent me running out of rooms as a child- spiders? Not a problem. Vicious dogs? Forget it. Bees and wasps? AAAARGH! Apparently the larvae have been sprayed with insecticide which doesn't appeal to the environmentalist part of me but does appeal to the OH-MY-GOD-THERE-ARE-BEES-ON-MY-DESK part of me. And it does, once again, make me marvel slightly at how the Japanese appreciate nature in their everyday lives.


ARGH!

What's wrong with my eyes?

When I first arrived in Japan I had no more idea of what to do with children than I had of what to do with lotus root, ie not a clue. My first class with a group of 5 and 6 year olds was a veritable disaster with me doing a dry self introduction and then (fortunately) the teacher leading the games in a 100% let's-not-learn-any-English failure of a lesson. Thus began the learning curve.

Two years later and the classes are fun and breezy. The kids are enthusiastic, I am (generally) relaxed and with the exception of maybe one class (I have five elementary schools, so I don't think that's a bad statistic) the kids are enthusiastic. It's been really good fun getting to know them, and even though I don't know their names (total number of students I teach= 800) I have got to know their personalities. You learn to judge which kids are competitive, which kids want to win, which kids are happy to take part, which kids need a little coaxing before they'll get involved, and then as a class how to grab their attention and present the lesson in a way that grabs their attention, sometimes even entering into bizarre incorrect-English/ incorrect-Japanese banter with 10 year olds. It's challenging and fun, although if you're not well or a little bit stressed having up to 50 excitable kids can be quite difficult and prove a very different challenge.

Anyway, here are some of my kids. It's hard to pick out favourite classes- these three are from one school- but I know which ones I will miss coming to most. The season of goodbyes has begun and these are among the first casualties (was that slightly overdramatic? I think maybe so...) Last week was the final visit to Tsukida shogakko where tears were held back on numerous occassions (although a couple of teachers were crying) and the hardest moment was after all the lessons when the school principal gave a speech at our after school goodbye tea party. I almost blubbed into my cake. I don't cry often, but when I do I'm a screamer (don't ever sit with me through Schindler's List, you'll leave with eardrums as shredded as your emotions).


4th graders- cheeky, funny and very good students.

More 4th graders- competitive, bossy and humorously bizarre.

One of my 2nd grade classes. These kids are excited as much by the fact that I have a bum chin and unplucked hair on my arms as they are in the English. And believe me when I say they're excited. Often loud, quick on the uptake and very quirky, I shall miss these kids a lot.

You know you've been on JET too long when...

you think nothing of locking yourself on the school roof and sunbathing in your smalls.

Twice.