After a week and a half I finally got to see the one thing that this city is famous for – the Amanohashidate (bridge to the heavens), a 3.3 km natural land bridge that crosses Miyazu Bay. Our group of ten JETs from all around the area gathered at the Amanohashidate Station, after Maggie, the new high school AET Rob and I made our way there on the local train. We had told Rob to meet us at the station thinking, yeah, it's Miyazu, he has to be the only other gaijin we'll see at that time and place, since we hadn't met him before and didn't know his face. Wrong. It must have been because of Obon that we saw several gaijin for the first time, unconnected to each other in Miyazu. We ten JETs new and old from all four corners of Tango converged onto Amanohashidate to swim and wander around, and being the first day of the Obon holiday, it was crowded! After buying ice creams (mine was my favourite green tea flavoured one), we walked along to path to Amanohashidate only to be held up in a small crowd gathered before a bridge that had turned 90° to let the boats underneath cross. It was a pretty cool bridge, still in the traditional arched style, but turny and from then on known as the Harry Potter bridge.
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| Harry Potter bridge turns when you least expect it! |
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| ... and occasionally lets people go to where they need to. |
The others swam for several hours while Maggie and I sat under the huge Matsu (Japanese pine) trees that lined the Amanohashidate or ran errands for the others like buying snorkelling equipment or was entertainment for the surrounding toddlers. The water was so warm and luckily there was a breeze blowing through, or I would have expired within the first 30 minutes. Constantly people huned around in rented speedboats and Seados and the odd parachuter could be seen being tugged along by a boat. Someone came up with the idea we could buy an ¥1,000,000 boat if all we and our BoE workmates chipped in, then drive it to Okinawa or Korea for a holiday. Yeah, nah... a bunch of pretentious school teachers in their togs and sunglasses sipping wine on the back of a boat has to be the saddest, most sympathy-evoking sight ever to be witnessed.
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| This area outside of the flags. The Japanese take swim safety seriously. |
After being stung, burned, stabbed and generally maimed by the sea and the sun, we stopped for a lunch of onigiri and Aquarius along the beach while providing more entertainment for more toddlers, finding lost cellphones for high school students and talking about how to dress for the upcoming school year. One of the older JETs, Simon, mentioned he got a summons from his supervisor about his choice of clothing during his first days of school. His supervisor wrote a message out in Japanese and put it in to Google translate so Simon could understand. “Please do not be fabulous,” was what appeared on the screen. Every new JET now must been warned. There are some mornings that I just can't help this problem, but now I have forewarning I can go through the steps to help suppress the fabulousness. One of his friends who was female also got a message along the same lines saying “Please do not be sexy,” so fabulousness and sexiness in the workplace is unacceptable here in Japan.
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| The overly fabulous gaijin take over Amanohashidate, with onigiri in hand. |
Even after our big lunch of onigiri we were still hungry so we made our way back to the town and stopped at a restaurant for second lunch. I had cold soba noodles with tempura, while I'm not a huge fan of it, it does remind me of the lunches I used to have with Okaasan back in Matsue, so I ate it for the nostalgia factor more than anything. The restaurant had good views of the Amanohashidate but when you look at it from ground level it just looks like a normal beach. One day I will come back and maybe walk the length of it and take the chairlift up to the viewing points to take the stereotypical touristy pictures.
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| Cold soba and tempura. Get your tabe on! |
For the rest of the afternoon we wandered around the big temple that is in the actual town while I practised my photography skills (my camera is so freakin difficult to use if you want to do anything more than the auto settings). There isn't much to write, and sorry for the listlessness of this entire blog, but I was and am exhausted by that/this stage especially from the heat, so my mind switched off as I just followed the others back to the station. Most of the group broke away to have drinks and stay the night at Simon's house, but Maggie and I had promised our adoptive mother Masako that we would go and hear her and her bandmates play that night. In hindsight that could have been a bad idea.
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| The small fans that hung from every tree at the temple. They had something written on the otherside, but I never really stopped to see what. |
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| Moving on after a tiring day. |
Her band Emma (a combination of the first two letters of her name and the other singers name, Emi), consists of four members, her and Emi on vocals and lead guitars, Shou-chan who I've mentioned before on backing guitar and another guy I don't know the name of on bongos and the harmonica. This guy, you could tell was a crowd favourite, everyone cheered him on before he started playing and I could see why. He was a pro on the harmonica, and it was amazing to hear the range that something so small could produce. The music Emma plays is folk and jazz (or zuja as it's known here, a reverse of the phonetic sounds for the Japanese word jazu), and because she knew Maggie and I were in the audience she sang some songs in English which sounded great because her pronunciation is so good. Before Emma started playing, while a lone guitarist was doing covers of Japanese pop songs, Shou-chan came up to us to say we are doing We are the World by Michael Jackson. This didn't register anything in my head so I went on listening all night unsuspecting, only to be caught out when Masako said “Is Ali and Maggie here tonight? Can they come up?” Maggie had a clue from the beginning judging by the “I knew it!” she cried. Well all I can say is, at least she knew the song. As we ascended the step up to the platform, I was desperately trying to signal to Masako that I didn't know the words. Well the words were there, but I still didn't know the tune so for the first verse and chorus I looked like fish out of water blubbing speechlessly, trying to make the form my mouth around the words on the paper before me to fit the tune I was trying to work out playing around me. Maggie had it worse than me when Masako passed the mic to her and she became the lone signer in the group as I lip-synced somewhere off in the distance and with Masako micless, she couldn't signal to the rest of the group when to finish so the band kept repeating the chorus at least six or seven times, much to Maggies chagrin. I on the other hand couldn't stop cracking up. It was a fun night all in all. We had yakisoba made by some of Maggie's junior high students, and had the shaved ice that is so readily available at every festival. Apparently that joint with the band is just the beginning. They play all year round at music events in Miyazu as well as during their parties they throw during special occasions where everyone who attends has to sing with them a song from their books or if you give them enough warning, a song of your choice. A past JET Eric asked them to play the Kermit the Frog song, so I'm going to see if I can go one up and sing Italy's Hatafutte Parade (the [white] flag waving parade) song from Hetalia.
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| Masako and the rest of her band Emma. |
After having no sleep-ins for a week I was glad to wake up at 10am on Sunday. For the whole day I just puttered around the air-conditioned apartment, cleaning the tatami floors (they must be vacuumed and wiped down every week to avoid getting mouldy) and finally putting everything away in the myriad of varying sized and many coloured storage boxes Kim left me. That night we were to meet Masako and Shou-chan at Shou-chan's large house with Rob and the Ine JET, Jen, for a dinner of yakisoba before heading off to the Bon Odori practice. I never get sick of yakisoba. It is basically fried pre-cooked noodles with veg and sauce, and while I cooked variations of this for dinner back in NZ, in Japan it is so much tastier (filled with MSG).
We left Shou-chan's house and drove to the Mipple car park, then followed the sounds of the koto, taiko drums and bells through a little park to the open sand-covered festival grounds. A temporary raised platform surrounded by red lanterns stood in the middle of the grounds, encircled by professional dancers in yukata and learners like ourselves awkwardly stamping behind them, their eyes riveted to the graceful geta and tabi clad feet lightly stepping before them. It took a lot of practises and several comings and goings of disgruntled professional dancers for me to get the Miyazu Bon Odori dance sorted, but at least I did in the end. And I was proud of it. Rob on the other hand never mastered it so he will probably be on camera duty for the main event. Just when we were contented with our progress, the tempo of the taiko changed double-quick as the speakers blared out a different koto tune and everyone fell into their positions and began moving in time with such precision, that we gaijin stepped out of the circle lest we ruin the grace of it all. After our initial elation at getting what we thought was the only dance right we soon became disheartened as we bumbled around trying to link the fast hand and foot movements, but ending up looking like we were doing the Kermit the Frog dance. So we gave up, as was the natural thing to do. If we do have to do the other dances (which we have named the Ninja Dance and the Sleeve Dance) at the Bon Odori (which is tonight!), we've decided to Kermit the Frog it. Mind you, it is a competition so the gaijin team, living up to Japanese expectations of gaijin, will be awkward.
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| A taiko drummer and a bell player at the Bon Odori dance practise. |
So that was the weekend. Tune in next time for the Awkward Gaijin Bon Odori Team update and a cure for those nasty rashes.
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| An old man in a yukata watching the dancers rehearse for the Bon Odori. |
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