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.