...Maybe It's Yesterday, I Done Forgot!

It's nearly the end of October and it's been a slightly less full on month than usual, so this post should be short. Should be.

October kicked off with a very exciting health check. These infamous Japanese health checks that every public servant must take every year come in a large variety of shapes and sizes. Some involve stripping off in front of pervy Japanese men, other involve swallowing disgusting liquids and having x-rays taken, some even involve electrodes put all over your body that send an electric current through you. Some can even experience all of these exciting things, like my friend Jen in Ine, but in Maggie, Nishihara-san and my case, all we got the basic “one, two, three now get the hell out” special. They take place in large halls, usually a town hall and they have you move from station to station like a cow going through the slaughterhouse, at each stop someone taking a piece of you off. The first test involved a nice Japanese man with lollies telling me to take off my bra in the back of a bus. OK the lollies part was a lie, but I wish it wasn't. Yup, it was the x-ray. It was over pretty fast so it wasn't as bad as Jen's horror stories. Next, luckily, came the urine test because I had been holding on all morning and was desperate. I had drunk so much water beforehand when I found out the was no western toilets the in hall and I can't go in Japanese toilets unless I'm busting. After you pee in the little paper cup, you then leave the toilet with cup in hand, walk through the hall full of people, cut through the line of other motionless cows and hand it over – with everyone looking on. Luckily all the water I had drunk just made it look like I was holding a cup of water. Next was the blood pressure test where I had to put my arm in large vacuum-like device for ages, while it sucked life out of me. After this came the video game station, or the vision test. Here you look down a microscope and hold a little joystick while watching a circle in the lens that has a chunk taken out of it. In which direction the chunk has been taken out you have to move the joystick in that direction. I'll been playing these sorts of games since I was little so I was pro at it with 20/20 points. I found that the older people weren't very good at it but you can't blame them – they're not electronic natives like we are, although I don't understand Maggie's score. She plays a lot of games but she didn't do very well at this. N00b. Next was a check over by the doctor who was kind of good at English. He didn't do a hell of a lot, just sort of poked and prodded for a couple of seconds while he talked about Adelaide after he heard I was from New Zealand. He soon quietened after I told him the fact that Adelaide is actually in Australia (surprise, surprise!). Finally, came the hearing test which involved listening to sounds in headphones (something else I spend a lot of time doing, so I was pretty pro at that, too).

That afternoon Maggie had spotted tents being put up on her way from the junior high school so she rushed home to tell me “We've got crepes!” In Miyazu we have no crepes. Our hunt for crepes began in Kyoto, but we lucked out there too, it seems Japan, the land flowing with crepes isn't that at all. They're actually a rare specimen that only emerge at festivals. So the appearance of the elusive crepe meant just that – it was festival time! This was the Yawarabi or lantern festival that Miyazu holds every year, that Maggie and I contributed to their marketing piece on Miyazu TV. We headed to the last sighting of the crepes and, lo and behold, there they were in their creamy goodness, so we bought some banana chocolates ones along with some mochi (rice cakes) and butaman (Chinese pork buns). That was dinner sorted. The Yawarabi Festival consisted of the streets of Miyazu being lit up with lanterns made of soda bottles with sand in the bottom and tealight candles placed on the sand. We met Nishihara-san and her two daughters Momoka and Haruka at the preschool which had one of the most impressive lantern displays down a long series of steps. 

It's a long walk to the top, but the lighting's sufficient.

We moved on and saw Noriko from the drinking party the week before who was at the information desk handing out maps and guiding people and looking bored out of her tree so we stopped by to say hi. She pointed out the places housing lanterns which happened to be all of the temples and shrines the the small area around the junior high school, and I couldn't believe how many there were. The area was less than a kilometre square and yet it had 12 temples and shrines jammed into it. Needless to say you see one, you've seen them all. It was very nice to walk around the grounds as each temple had arranged their lanterns into different patterns and shapes from kanji characters to the shape of Amanohashidate. 

Oh, real mature Priest-san.

At some temples they invited you in to check out some of the relics and old literature they house in glass cases, and they let me go up close to the golden alters to take photos. 

Gold!

At some shrines they had live music performances from a local jazz group and a local pop singer who we've heard at every gathering and are getting a bit sick of her one or two songs. We didn't stay too long as Maggie wasn't feeling too flash, so after buying more festival food we headed home. We didn't go to all of the temples and shrines but we did try.

The next afternoon saw the start of the Miyazu Cultural Festival, another annual event, but as I found out when I rocked up to the Opera House, this one was for the oldies. It ran over the Saturday and the Sunday and was a showcase of traditional music and dance from around the area and I felt a little out of place being the youngest person there. The first half of the afternoon was the traditional music portion with kimono-clad women and hakama-clad men playing in ensembles of the shamisen (three string guitar, which I'm starting lessons for next week), shakuhachi (bamboo flute, which I've been taking lessons in for a couple of weeks at Yoro Primary along with the principal) and koto (floor harp).

Women on the shamisen and the koto.

There was also a few single dancers who did narrative dances as a singer sung the story. I never understood the stories but the costumes were great.

A woman playing the part of a man.

A family of dancers.

For the second portion of the first day, it was the very showy dance troops and enka singers. The dance troops had come from several different prefectures and some did traditional comedic dances in traditional working kimono and head scarves while some did very modern takes on traditional dance. The enka singers were of course OTT as usual. On TV every week there is usually enka shows where female singers wear gaudy ball-gowns on a stage dripping with lights and tacky imagery and sing traditional Japanese pop music, which involves a lot of accordion music for some reason. There were three enka singers and although they had great voices I still find enka pretty bizarre.

The amazing stage drop curtain showing a scene of the lanterns
floating around the bay during the Obon festival. This thing was handmade and was HUGE!

Finally, as evening was falling, the most bizarre group of the day got up on stage, a group of about 18 old women and one man in their long frilly embroidered skirts or black billowy pants and smocked and embroidered shirts. These were the Miyazu Folk Dancers and they did folk dances from England, Sweden, Germany and Russia. Because there was only one man in the group, many of the women had to dress as men to dance with a partner. They did the dances well but for some reason I just found it too bizarre.

So that was the first half of October. Tune in next time for the Amanoshidate Kimono Festival or How To Really Annoy Your Japanese Hosts. Oyasumi (goodnight)!

Maybe It's Tomorrow, And Maybe It's Not...

For some unknown reason I only get colds in the middle of summer. Kyoto being the hottest prefecture in the country, it was bound to happen here, too. So it's 30°C or so and I'm sneezing my face off while the staff around me give me a wide berth like I've come in from a leper colony to teach their kids. I know I'm supposed to wear a surgical mask at times like these, but I just don't want to. So for the last week I'm been up to not much. The typhoon I mentioned n my last post has disappeared like it never happened. The three days of school that were cancelled because of it seem like they off on a holiday rather than rain because it's sunny again, the only change being the days are no longer sweltering, just pleasant. So here's the sunny September update since It's the first BOE day in a while and I can't be assed writing this at home.

Yesterday (Thursday 29 September) one of my schools, Yoshizu Primary, held an international day and invited Maggie, Rob, the AET from Yosano, Natalie, two Philipino mothers of Yoshizu children and I to teach a class each a game from our countries. Maggie and I were in charge of the 3^rd and 4^th graders that were combined. We headed outside to first play a couple of Japanese the kids taught us, then Maggie and I introduced them to 'wink murder' under the slightly censored name of 'sandman'. Nishihara-san had suggested we change the dying into sleeping as that may not appeal to the kids. I found this really odd. The kids are exposed to death all the time from the sort of anime they watch on TV, but even so they refuse to play at death. I remember we used to like this game especially because of the melodramatics we could perform as we died, but the kids here were contented enough to play at sleeping and snore loudly. After the games we had lunch with our class and as I walked in, I saw they had made a welcome big poster.

Welcome, Ali-sensei!

They had further pulled out the stops for the foreigners by having a very unusually tasty school lunch of fried fish and rice with a nice furikake on top. After coffee in the principal's office we were driven home. The day took under several hours, a usual day for me, my fellow AETs were miffed to hear. I don't think I could cut an 8.30 to 4.15 day like they do. Doing more than four periods a day? Gotta be joking. Today I was at Kamimiyazu Primary and this morning they asked for me to come in around 10.30 to do two classes, have lunch, then get dropped off at home. Life is good. :)

Last week (Thursday 22 September) was the birthday party of a fellow AET, Mario, in Omiya. I don't really know many of the other AETs in the Tango area, just the ones that started this year with me, so I went along to drink, basically. Maggie and I took the train to Omiya and began the great hike in the general direction of the bad instructions we were given. On the way as we headed into the countryside we passed a semi-shady looking woman with a man on the street and as we walked on they drove up beside us and the woman spoke up in a very American English accent, “If you have time please come and help me practice my English” and gave us her business card. Her name was Chimama (or Hoochimama, as we now know her as), and the business card she gave us was under the business name of something odd that I can’t remember. But this name rang a bell for Maggie as this place had two names, although she couldn't place it until it was mentioned to the other AETs at the party. This place was a strip joint under the name of Manopause. So Hoochimama worked at Manopause and wanted English practice. Next time we're in Omiya we thought we should drop by, it's nice to meet new interesting people. 

The party itself was held at an izakaya so there was just endless finger food and drinks they kicked us out at midnight. The birthday boy Mario is a third year AET living with his partner Matt who is also an AET. We didn't really see either of them as there were a ton of people there spread out over two long tables and we were jammed in like sardines so it was hard to move around, but the hosts did try to get around everyone they could. Highlight of the evening probably was the existence of bourbon and this was the first time I had seen it in Japan. It was no Jim Beam but it was nice to have it for the first time in a long while. After dinner we headed out to karaoke and rented a giant room, singing drunken Lady Gaga ballads until the staff threw us out at 2am. Well, I'll say you haven't seen real karaoke until you've seen four drunk gay guys singing Born This Way, complete with dance moves at two in the morning. 

"I'm on the right track baby I was born this way!"

Luckily Maggie and I were able to get a ride back to Miyazu afterwards because all of the trains had finished their runs long before. Luckily the day after, which was a Friday, was was national holiday (Autumnal Equinox Day, yeah, it's actually a holiday) so here goes the second long weekend this week! And because I've had two days off because of the typhoon, it means that I've only worked half a day this week. Otsukaresama deshita!

Group hug!

On Sunday (25 September), Miyazu hosted a regional soft volleyball tournament where we saw over 20 teams from around Kinki converge on our home grounds and compete in a goodwill competition. There were only two of our teams that competed but we meet people from as far away as Fukuchiyama and as north as Kyotango with most teams being comprised of people our age and some teams of mothers. For the record, I suck at volleyball and see myself as more of a hindrance than a help so I wasn't expecting much from me or my team. That premonition was bang on. My team played three games and we didn't win any matches but we at least won a set which extended a game into the third set instead of the usual two we played. It was still really fun though. During lunch I met a really nice guy from Fukuchiyama called Junji who had just returned home from spending five years in Seattle. As expected his English was excellent and it was a welcome change to speak English to a Japanese person after all the Japanese I have to speak all of the time. This was the first time my team mates had heard me speak English so we had an audience every time we spoke. I met his team and introduced them to mine, and we played a couple of games together in the off time. We all got along so well that we are planning a meet up with them again sometime for a practice together and a dinner and karaoke night out in Fukuchiyama. Even though I suck at volleyball I think my team mates like having me on the team for the comedy aspect. It's not so much that it's funny to watch my miss the ball every time (although it's partly to do with the fact that I can't jump and end up waving my legs like a madman while only lifting off about ten centimetres off the ground), but they like my on court theatrics. At Mastsue too I gained popularity by acting like a total dork and entertaining the masses, something I could never do in New Zealand if I tried. That evening, a few people from my team and I met up for a dinner of yakiniku (or what I like to call, “Freakin' cook it yourself” niku) which Maggie joined us for, and grilled the night away. Twas goood. Now that I think about it, there's been a drinking party every week with one group or another. The Japanese sure love their alcohol (even if it's highly diluted, it just mean's they drink more of it!).

Still on the topic of food tonight I went along to a dinner Maggie and I were invited to, which I originally thought was a meeting with someone from city hall accompanied by someone from the BOE. I had envisioned a rather formal event. Boy, was I wrong. We met up with Nishihara-san beforehand as we didn't know the way to the restaurant so I guessed at least she had been invited and we passed Kawahara-san on the way so that also counted him in. Great. The reassembly of the Rowdy Duo, that writes out formality. All four of us arrived at a small Chinese restaurant and occupied their only two tables as two others from the BOE joined us and the beers and nihonshu arrived. Kawahara-san managed to down his beer in 30 seconds and order more while I sipped my nihonshu as we waited for our guest to arrive. Noriko was the name of our guest from the city hall and she was the niece of one of the BOE staff who had spent several years at a university in Arizona. By the time she arrived I had lost count of the nihonshu that had float past me, each one seeming the break the laws of gravity more than the last and finally becoming airborne. Nishihara-san too was beyond recognition, her face a dark red ball moving ever closer to the recipient of her conversation before falling on their shoulder, with each round of shochu. The night was a lot of fun and the large number of cultural blunders I attempted could not be stopped as my alcohol tainted ears blocked out all cries of warning.

Kawahara-san, you so crazy!

It's peace time.

And Nishihara-san is horizontal already.

Even though all the tables in the izakaya had been taken over by us, other patrons would wander in from time to time to seat themselves at the bar. One such patron happened to be the son of my kyudo teacher who had heard of me. Needless to say at kyudo the next night I was welcomed with a “You went drinking last night, didn't you. I hear you can hold your liquor” followed by a complete recap what I did the night before as told to him by his son, for the rest of the kyudo members. From my point of view, the version of events went nothing like how he relayed it so I'll just disregard his version. Anyway somewhere within the 15 minute play-by-play recap I was challenged by the old kyudo master (who resembles Mr. Miyagi but with a longer beard, and is therefore wiser)to a drinking match sometime at the dojo using the kyudo clubs' ample supplies of sake, that they were quick to show me. This was brought on by the rest of the club wondering who could hold their liquor the longest knowing full well that the master was indeed a master at it. Tanoshimi da na.

Well You Can Ask Your Grandma If She Want A Coffee Lolly!

(From the 21st September).

I've got no internets. This blog is brought to you by boring days at the BoE and commandeering Maggie's computer when she's not around. The lack of Facebook and... Facebook has led me to take up other hobbies including getting outside and enjoying the sun typhoons. Yesterday I turned up for work at my most furtherest away school, Yoro only to find that school was on hold until confirmation that the storm we were currently in the middle of, had passed. That we were in a storm was news to me when I rocked up to the staffroom; the fact that I had just travelled an hour in the bus alongside a raging sea that was splashing onto the road and not realised something was out of the ordinary was more of a miracle. My supervisor had sent me a text saying not to go to school but I had only received it after I arrived. The principal however had anticipated this and had entertainment lined up for the few hours I would spend there which took the shape of a bamboo flute or shakuhachi. I blew on that massive freaking pipe for hours and couldn't produce a decent note, but I'll try over the next few days so when I return in a couple of weeks I can wow them with a rousing rendition of BAG on the shakuhachi.

Much has happened since my last post including much travel, dinners out, hangovered mornings, sporting highlights (and lowlights) and Rocky end montage re-enactments atop of shrine steps. Volleyball is still one of my weekly happenings but probably not for long. I haven't been for a couple of weeks after I seriously sprained my foot (again) and further weakened it while playing with the kids at Yura Kindergarten last week, so I haven't had much practise for the tournament I was forcefully entered into happening on Sunday. Kyudo is going spiffingly. I have made more progress in the four times I have been here than in the year I did it at Matsue North High. Last week I even got to fire at the long-range targets, something I was not allowed to do in Matsue. Soon I'll be allowed to get a hakama kimono uniform and start practising in earnest to compete in the Kyoto Area Competition next year. Rob, the high school AET has also joined despite saying it was too graceful for the likes of him. One of the reasons why I love doing kyudo here is that the main and vice teachers are some of the nicest, most patient people I have ever met. The main teacher looks like Mr. Miyagi and not only does he wax on, he waxes off, too. I'm still doing Chinese with Maggie, Masako and Shou-chan and soon my shamisen lessons will begin after Shou-chan organised talked to one of his friends who's a teacher. The future is looking busy. Thank goodness I only have to work for about four hours a day and have time to sleep plan lessons all afternoon ready for the nights activities.

One thing I have been indulging myself in too much recently is eating out. There are sooo many eating places in Miyazu, most being three table closet sized shops on the first floors of peoples houses, but the food is awesome. Every so often Keita invites us out to dinners at Azito, especially last week after Maggie and Rob decided to join the volleyball team, so I think the dinner was a ploy to get them to stay for good even though after one night Rob was adamant he was not coming back. That night it was we three Miyazu AETs, Keita and a primary school teacher who also played volleyball. I went through three bottles of sake, as per usual while the others drank beer. The day after this soiree I was summoned to the BoE by Nishihara-san after teaching my oh-so-tiring half-day at Miyazu Primary. She then proceeded to tell me about something she had just done that involved holding a sign and having a video taken of her to be put on the net. It just so happened I had to do the same, so here's a montage of people saying a word each. I'm the very last person and Maggie's in there, too. 

Anyway, at the place where this was filmed, which was a sake shop I happened to mention to Nishihara-san I had drunken some of the stuff I saw in the shop and had a hangover. The guy who was filming the clips for the website, whom I had never met in my life just turned to me, straight-faced and said “Yes, I know. I heard you last night.” The foreigner can't do anything in this town without everyone knowing about it. It just so happens that he had a night job of a cook at the Azito. But there has been a case of my students coming up to me saying, “My grandma heard from her friends' daughter that you bought coffee lollies at the supermarket on Sunday.” Seriously. That's how much privacy we have here.

This week is the week of long weekends. The long weekend we've just had consisted of three trains and two hangovers. The first day, Saturday, being a train to Fukuchiyama in the evening with Maggie, after Chinese. This was a necessary trip. We had to ascertain the resources in our area for future reference. Such references may include the urgent purchase of manga and figures, so we now have a plan in place. The train ride took just under 50 minutes and although Fukuchiyama isn't a big city, it has an electronics store and a few book stores. And a Book Off. When we walked to where Maggie remembered the Book Off was, we found it had packed up and moved, so we tracked it down across the other side of town. Not only had it moved, it had powered up to include a Hard Off. Lest to say our 30 minute walk across town was well worth it. 

Everyone was at Hard Off that night.

That night we had dinner at a really good ramen place that lets you get mass quantities of any one ingredient. I, of course, quadrupled up on the meat but others I saw had piles of spring onions and another resembled a black hole with sheets upon sheets of black nori (seaweed) piled around the edge of their bowl. The ramen was goooood. 

Long weekend day 2, Sunday saw Maggie and I travelling to an even further away city, Toyooka, by fancy train to meet up with the other female AETs in the area. First we went to the famous big clothing chain Uniqlo where I learned the Japanese etiquette of trying on clothes the oblivious foreigner way as I was scolded by a shopping assistant after wearing my shoes into the changing room. You have to take shoes off like you do in any carpet or tatami floored areas of any shop in Japan. We didn't do much more than eat after that, first at Baskin Robbins icecream parlour, then at a patisserie, and finally again at dinner at a Korean restaurant. This restaurant was so good and with the help of Sammi who lived in Korea for a year, we got some pretty amazing dishes. I tried [the whole bottle of] some Korean alcohol called sochu that tasted like really strong sake, which made me go flying on the train back to Miyazu. Interpret as you will.

"Hey I read that rice makes a good facial mask. Maggie wanna try?"

Sunday was a fun-filled day in the shopping metropolis of Miyazu as the female AETs reunited again for the nearly sole purpose of buying a present for another AET, Mario's birthday which will be tomorrow. We thought we could rustle up a Gundam kit in ten minutes from the local toy store but we ended up taking over an hour picking one he might like from the hundreds that were available. The store owner even gave us a discount after she heard it was for a birthday present. Apart from that, we went ¥100 ($2) shop shopping, where you can get the most awesome things for ¥100, then finally to the Dodgy Cowboy Place where they make yum banana crepes. I can't think of the real name for the place but their mascot is a dodgy looking cowboy so that's good enough. Their crepes are good but rarely do they have the supplies to make them, as was so this time. For the eight of us there were three plates of crepes brought out to us by the same ancient little woman with a humpback and bad eyesight who always serves us. Her eyes are so bad that whenever we pay we have to show her the buttons to press on the cash register. That night after everyone went home, Keita invited us out to a place we hadn't been to before but we knew of it and had seriously wanted to go and check it out despite thinking it was a pervy old man bar like the Fukusuke where we live. Maggie didn't come in the end but Keita invited one other girl from volleyball to come as well, someone of whom I had never really talked to. The three of us had a great time and my view of the place changed when I saw it wasn't a dodgy bar, but a very high-class Japanese restaurant. The girl who came too, Nomura-san I found was into the same stuff I like and was even a big Shinsengumi fan like myself, so sometime we plan to do a big Shinsengumi related trip to Kyoto.

We've done a few other things in the last month like going to the Kunda Junior High sports festival one Saturday a couple of weeks ago where Maggie was forced to participate in the PTA event which involved chucking balls in a bucket and a bowl strapped to the top of a bamboo pole with the rest of the teachers. 

Go Maggie!

I on the other hand was the victim of bitter old man foreigner rage at the event, having to endure an old fart kicking my back through the gap in the bench I was sitting on from behind. Maggie has several times been prosecuted by our Chinese teacher Ma-chan, an old Japanese man who has a grudge against Americans. He leaves me alone and is actually quite nice when he's not unabashedly stating his opinions on how Westerners can't do Japanese things like wear kimono because it won't suit them. There's a van that drives around Miyazu equipped with speakers on the outside, spewing out nationalistic anti-foreigner propaganda. Next time they come around I'll give them a warm welcome to the neighbourhood (seriously) and wave and smile at them. Maybe I'll give them a biscuit or two.