One of the Most Beautiful Nights of my Life to Date

Post VII

Today I had one of the most, if not the most, beautiful and amazing experiences of my life. A bit of context: I had just finished my day of teaching, helping a very talented young girl in a speech contest, and doing general preparation work. Once I had finished at about 5, I decided I would grab my book from my apartment and head to the beach. I got there, and found it a bit too sandy to properly settle and read – despite the beautiful scenery. Not wanting to go home, I decided to have a walk instead.

I eventually came to a headland, where I found an absolutely deserted pebble beach, which I wondered along. It was then that I stumbled across this cave:

The cave framed the Great Seto Bridge so beautifully, and the entire beach was simply wonderful, so I decided to hang around to watch the sunset. As I was strolling down the beach, I spotted a marvellous piece of driftwood. This, combined with the lovely natural frame of the cave, inspired me to make a small sculpture on the beach. I searched for some more driftwood, and then built my sculpture – inspired by Shinto gateways. I thought the piece was quite beautiful on its own, but it was the context that made it really special.

I took a whole bunch of photos, and then sat down and simply watched the waves lap against the shore. I admired the sun, and the beautiful bridge beyond. Flicking through some of the photos, it surprised me how much such a temporary structure imposed itself upon the landscape. I then took a series of photos from inside the cave. I really love how they turned out. I am not a photographer, nor am I particularly artistic, but I have god a vivid imagination, and it just felt right to try to create something in the moment. I love that these pictures are dominated by nature, then you have my small and temporary structure, and then the engineering marvel of the Great Seto Bridge beyond. I found it in an odd way metaphorical of mans relation to nature, and I particularly loved that it expresses this in a way that still shows nature to be the most dominant force.

I was really looking forward to getting some pictures of the sun setting inside the archway I had created, but unfortunately a massive cloud came in and blocked my view of it!

However, this is where a little bit of magic started to happen. I was thinking of heading home because I was tired, and thought I had already seen the best of the sunset. However, for some reason I decided to stay a little longer and just lay on the beach looking around. All of a sudden, the cloud that had ruined my view turned in to a violent electrical storm! What I thought had ruined what was otherwise a beautiful experience was now turning in to a once in a lifetime one. I watched the electricity dance across the sky, all through the little window I had created on the beach. It was as if I was looking in to another, simpler, world. After about 10 minutes of watching this is decided I had to try to get a photo of the lightning. I had refrained from doing so before as I was so utterly absorbed in the moment that I thought getting out a phone would spoil the whole thing. As a matter of pure luck, I managed to get just one photo of one of the calmer strikes of lightning. It is probably the best photo I will ever take, and was the perfect end to one of the most magical evenings of my life.

                                                        

Squeaky shoes

              Post VI (and a half)

Remember those shoes that kids wore in the 90s that flashed every time they took a step? Well, in Japan kids wear shoes that squeak like a dog toy every time they take a step. What sadistic parent would subjugate themselves to that sort of torture??? I am coincidentally on the ferry with the same family with the same three kids who ALL have squeaky shoes on! It's an ensemble of annoying and I have only been with them for 2 hours. How the parents cope I do not know....

Awa-Odori!!!!!

Post VI

So last night I went to the words second biggest dance festival (second to Rio Carnival only), and it takes place in a small-ish city on Shikoku – Tokushima. As it is a Japanese festival, you would expect it to be highly organised, planned, and so on. But in fact there was only one street that had any sort of structure. The rest of the dance troupes would just wonder around until they found a square of road, and start doing their thing. Alost all had their own percussion bands, and the whole festival is just 4 straight days of dancing. It was awesome!! The Awa-Odori dance is really simple, so that even us westerners were invited to join in with all the dancing, and though it was a bit embarrassing, it was quite a laugh. Unlike a British festival too, the food was great and the beer was cheap. So that’s pretty much all of my boxes ticked!

The women all wear these hats that kind of look like a taco shell, and everyone just has an awesome time drinking and dancing and playing drums. I would have put a picture on the bottom of the post but iPhones fucking suck arse and won’t do anything unless they feel like it, and it didn’t want me to have photos on my computer. (Edit: it cooperated)

Interestingly, I had thought about not going because I was pretty rotten hung over during the day before we were due to leave, so the thought of getting the ferry made me feel quite violently ill. But, I managed to force myself to go, and boy am I glad that I did. The reason I was hung over, though, was because I had decided to pop in to a little restaurant on the island, as I hadn’t had any time to do food shopping (I had been too busy that day sorting out a phone and climbing a mountain). I was nervous as I didn’t want them to think I was a tourist. Luckily, and somewhat unsurprisingly, they knew who I was because the daughter of the owner is a good friend of one of my fellow teachers. Also fortunately, a young girl there spoke fantastic English. We got to talking, and the master of the house seemed really cool and chipped in when he could. It was then that I was told a pretty horrible story that a girl in fact committed suicide in the apartment in which I now live. Now, I can only hope that this story was just to scare me, and that it is not true, but nonetheless  I will ask my Kyoto Sensei on Monday – or perhaps I won’t, maybe not knowing is better because then I can at least convince myself that it is just hearsay!

The night was awesome though, and towards the end the master of the house filled awkward silences in our conversation (by this point the young girl who spoke English had gone), by offering me a serious amount of alcohol. I must have tried at least 5 Japanese whiskies, all with beer chasers (for some unknown reason), Shotchu (basically vodka schnapps type stuff) and the local regions Sake. Once all of that had gone down, I found glass after glass of beer arriving at the bar, brought to me by the owner’s daughter. As all of this alcohol was free, so I thought it would be rude to decline any of it, so I sat there with the owner, his daughter, some other locals, and just drank far far too much. 

But, despite the hangover (which was actually less bad than it should have been because the alcohol here is so pure, not so many nasty chemicals), I really enjoyed the night and I am glad that I stayed for the drinks!

All in all, it’s been a cracking last couple of days. Chill tomorrow, do some more exploring, perhaps actually get on to learning Japanese (!) and then back to work on Monday….    

Contemporary art, Germans, and too Much Time To Think...

Post V

Today I had what I would describe as my first contemporary art ‘experience’. I am well aware that contemporary art is all about ‘experiences’, and when it’s not it errs on the side of self-mockery. But until today I have never really bought in to experiential art, in the contemporary sense anyway. There is an art instillation on the island which is indescribable. You are lead in to a pitch black room and sat down. You are told you will start to see some lights once your eyes adjust to the dark. You sit there, not knowing what to expect, when out of no-where and at no identifiable time, ghostly shadows start dancing in front of your eyes. You are not quite sure if it is the art, or if you are producing the images yourself in the struggle to adjust to the sheer darkness. They grow in intensity and become almost abrasive in their intrusion in to your mind. Then the German twats next to you start talking. Experience over. You remember you are just in a room. The art loses its force and you realise that you are actually sitting inside a tourist attraction, just like a ghost house at a fair.

I wanted to stave off talking about this topic, at least for a little while, but I can’t really help it. I saw a lot of the contemporary art that is dotted around, and at each I was filled with mixed emotions. Compared to the first time that I walked up to the ‘art shrine’ – when I was completely alone in the middle of a typhoon, the visit today was dreadful. The ‘crypt’ ( I don’t really know what to call it, but it was a space under the shrine) was open to the public, and the queue was long. It was like a line for a ride at Disney land. The French, eager to see everything, took photos of the shrine from their position in the queue, so as to maximise art consumption. People came, queued, and left. They came for the attraction, and once that need was satisfied, they left. Not for a minute did they reflect on the nature of the piece.

Now I definitely do not want to defend contemporary art. But the shrine is something that is actually quite beautiful. Done in the old Japanese style, with an enchanting walk up a Studio-Ghibli-esque staircase to get you there. And yet, no one cared. They had paid for their ticket, and were going to get the full value of the fare by making sure they saw everything. When I was standing in the queue, I couldn’t help but think that despite the fact that the art has done a great deal for the island, regenerating derelict areas and so on, it nonetheless does not feel like art to me. They are designed as attraction pieces, and the more you look at them, the more they begin to feel like the false backdrops you get at a movie set. They present themselves as art, but are in fact the opposite. There could be any other tourist gimmick in their place. They are meticulously planned so that they maximise intrigue, but they forgo their status as art in the process.

Despite all of that 'heavy thinking', I do have to confess that although I know all of this, I am still a sucker for it! I walked around and lapped it up just like everyone did. And you know what, it was fun. I will go back many times in the future, and I hope next time I can silence the little cynic in my head – and the German's with no manners!

Typhoon day 4: the End is Finally in Sight

Post IV

It’s Sunday afternoon and the Typhoon seems like it has passed, or I am in the eye of it, not really sure. I think it's more likly to be the end of it because the bugs have come back out of hiding. I’ve been for two strolls in the Typhoon so far, the first was yesterday when I walked up a hill to a shrine and just sat in the rain for a while; watching the sea aggressively crash against the beach and rocks below. The second was this morning, when I walked towards the local 7-eleven for some food. Before the storm, my supervisor has offered to take me to the store to buy some food, but for some unknown reason I declined the offer – perhaps out of not wanting to inconvenience her, or perhaps out of sheer laziness – so I instead took myself to the local, and very small, coop shop. I bought a couple of 6 packs of beer, some cup noodles, and a pack of broad beans. Looking in my basket I knew I did not have enough food for three days, but I thought ‘stuff it’ and left anyway. 

This morning, however, I regretted this decision. Looking upon a barren fridge, and not much fancying cup noodle for breakfast, I thought: right, time to walk to the 7-eleven. The walk is about half an hour, and the winds and rain were not quite as bad as yesterday, but still pretty fierce. I was wearing a t-shirt and trousers, everyone else was wearing thick raincoats and water-proof trousers. I was getting the good old ‘crazy foreigner’ looks again. I made it about half way when I heard a beep. Two of the younger members of staff at the BOE (no English) saw me and asked where I was going. They offered to drive me and I kindly accepted. About 300m down the road there was so much water that it would have been impassable by foot and I would have had to turn around, so I guess it was lucky they showed up. 

They then offered to wait whilst I shopped, which was very kind of them, but the main reason I had left the house was to get beer – but I felt like I had better not buy any because then they will have gone out of their way to help me just so I can pick up a few tins. Instead, I was sensible and bought some supplies. 

On an unrelated note, I found a porn stash left in my apartment by one of the former ALT’s. I would say that every typhoon has a silver lining, but tentacles and animated sex doesn’t really do it for me. So I guess it’s another long day of being cooped up inside, studying Japanese.

Another long, rainy day. Still Bright Spirits!

Post III

5.30 am: get up, have a banana and some bread, get showered, get in to my shirt and trousers, prepare for one hell of a sweaty day, because it’s yet another orientation. I was given a lift to the ferry in time for 6.30 am, and the typhoon hasn’t quite materialised enough to stop transport – that happens tomorrow so I keep hearing. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but ask my supervisor why the ferries had no life boats. She told me that the inland sea is very safe, and so they do not need them. She then said immediately: ‘actually there was a horrific accident once when two boats crashed and 400 people died’ ‘But do not worry, now the ferries have to wait outside the port when there is fog’. Oh. Great. Now, they could have just put some lifeboats on board – which seems to me the logical change in behaviour –  but instead they simply acknowledged the source of the crash, and vowed that that very same thing would never happen again. Oh well, I didn’t press the point. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but worry a little bit given that on my way back from orientation the typhoon was due to be picking up a bit of force.

The ride home quickly made me realise, though, that this is Japan. The sea, even in the storm, was remarkably calm, and in all seriousness there is so many other boats that you wouldn’t be bobbing about in your life vest too long before someone came and helped you.

Speaking of helping, at orientation I heard a crazy amount of stories of Japanese kindness to us poor foreigners. One girl was driven all the way to the city from the countryside by an old ladies grandson (who, by the sounds of it, ended up in this arrangement rather against his will). On the other side of the prefecture, a good friend of mine stayed in the house of one of his neighbours who spoke no English at all, because his bed did not arrive and he only found out last minute. 

In fact, I remember a great story from the Tokyo orientation of a man getting the last train, but the wrong way. He travelled for an hour in the opposite direction from his house. So he gets off the train, now at least 2 hours away from his house, and starts panicking. Luckily for him, there is two men loitering in the car park (it is 2 am let me add). He explains his situation and they drove him all the way home! Now, I don’t know about you. But if I got on the wrong train back home, and somehow ended up in Scunthorpe, and saw two men loitering in the car park at 2am, my reaction would be: I better run, they are either crack heads or try will try to rob me, or be crack heads who want to rob me. There is no way in a million years I would get in their car even if they offered, which they wouldn’t.

I also found an arcade today, after orientation, which had street fighter 2 in it. Well, I now know where the change from my beers will be spent. A quick few games, struggling to get past Guile (the pesky all American character), then I had to hurry back in the torrential rain to the last ferry, 6pm.