Heavy lifting

Post VXII 

 I have had a pretty crazy 4 days. The last two are completely boring, I had 7 demonstration lessons – more than the average ALT has in a year – which were just so draining, mainly because of all the lengthy meetings that go with them. But, at the weekend before the working onslaught I carried a Japanese portable (and I use portable very liberally here, as they weight just under three tones) shrine, known as a Mikoshi (みこし). I carried it for 2 2 hour stints, on Saturday and Sunday. So 8 hours in total. It was amazing! On the first day, it wasn`t actually a shrine, but a `portable` taiko drum (Japanese war drum). The people carrying it were some of the younger and more boisterous islanders, some of whom I have gotten to know through drinking and so on – in fact I was invited to carry it by the owner of a café I often drink at. Before we carried it, we all drank Shinto `holy water` - and lots of it. Of course, it was actually just Sake, which meant that some of the Japanese people were rather merry by the time we got to carrying it. Slightly worrying seeing as you are relying on everyone to pull their weight and not fall over. 

The style of carrying also involved a lot of bouncing up and down, and running down the street, both of which were a mixture of extremely exciting and extremely terrifying. But, it was a great party, and afterwards we went back to the café and all got extremely drunk. I went to bed, knowing I was going to wake up rotten hung over, knowing that I had to be up at 7am, and knowing that I would be carrying three tones of shrine again in the morning. My shoulders were in absolute agony, and the thought of doing it again made me feel sick (or maybe that was the drink). But, I decided to force myself to do it and I am glad that I did. The second day was much more like a ceremony. I wore a special ceremonial white robe and hat, and carried a beautifully ornate Mikoshi complete with God inside. We took the God (no one really knew which God) to chill out in the town, and just generally carried him/her for a few hours. I was given a huge bento for lunch, complete with beers, which was the perfect reward for the hard manual labour of carrying this thing! It was an absolutely unique experience, and one that I am very glad that I had, even if my body is absolutely knackered, sore, bruised and blistered. Looking forward to carrying it again next year!!

I take it all back....

I feel as though I need to retract my last post. Last night, when walking back to a friends house I fell in to what's known as a gaijin trap, or, foreigner trap. They are wide open drains by the side of the road. It was just under 5ft deep. I grazed my arm to shit, I am pretty sure I have broken a rib, and I just generally feel like a bit of a mug! Ah well. Stiff upper lip and all that.....

がいじん no more

Post XVI

Today I want to Okayama again (have I told the blog I have been already? Who knows. In case not, Okayama is fairly near me and is pretty awesome). I bought the new 3ds and super smash bros. Good bye what little free time I have!! So I am pretty excited about getting home. I also bought a tea set, which rather sadly I am equally excited about (a sign of aging perhaps???). 

Speaking of tea I popped in to a really nice looking antique shop, treating it more like a museum than having any intention to buy, knowing that it would be extortionately expensive. When I entered the shop I was greeted by the owner who began speaking to me in rapid Japanese. I asked him to slow down, and then realised he was offering me tea. Too polite to turn down is offer, I accepted, and was lead in to a small room crammed full of antiques with two benches facing opposite each other. Tea was poured and I was forced in to a very difficult conversation in Japanese. Much of what the man said went over my head, and I continually apologised for my terrible Japanese, but none the less we exchanged words for about 10 minutes until I exhoisted my Japanese vocabulary. I was then praised for my speaking ability (laughable if you had heard how bad it was), and got up and left. It was a lovely piece of Japanese hospitality, but what I enjoyed the most is that he recognised immediately that I was not a tourist. His imprinting statement was 'you live near here, right?' . So that made me feel chuffed. Perhaps I have finally stopped bumbling around like some clumsy Gaijin and started to fit in a bit more, even if my japanese does suck.

Tokushima Yu Ka Wai

Post XV 

I had a little excursion recently, to Tokushima, which is known for its natural beauty and remoteness. And god was it remote. We had planned to eat in the town, `Oboke`, once we got off the train, but there wasn`t a single restaurant. It was like the express train had just stopped at some arbitrary location along its tracks and let us off. It was very strange indeed.

Fortunately I recognized the Kanji for `Bashi ` which meant we hopped on a bus, heading for Kazurabashi, hopeful that we would find the Ryokan (Japanese guest house) on the way. Luckily the bus announcement was very clear, and the bus stopped right outside the Ryokan, so it was all relatively stress free. When we got there, the names of the people checking in were written in the entrance hall. The person checking in after me was called Yu Ka Wai. Which when read, sounds like “You Kawaii”, which is a Japanese word for super cute and awesome. 

 We had a couple of hours before we had to check in, so we went on a food hunt. We walked for about 40 minutes, following a hand drawn map, to no avail, so we headed back to the hotel. It then turned out that right next door to the hotel in the other direction from which we had walked, there was a small gift shop that also sold soba noodles. Typical, I suppose, but the walk was really nice and we had a great view of Oboke gorge and the river which name escapes me, perhaps the Iya river but I might be wrong. 

 Then, we basically had two days of Onsen! There was a range of outside and inside baths, but the most beautiful one by far was the Kazurabashi Onsen, which was up a cable car, and was just fantastic (I`ll try to put a picture on the blog post too!). Kazurabashi also has a very famous vine bridge, which we crossed and was terrifying! All in all, pretty nice weekend. I`ve put a link to a travel video of the weekend which was made by a Japanese iPhone app. The result is pretty hilarious but you`ll also get the idea of the beautiful scenery!

 http://magis.to/en4jAUxAA1kzLiEHDmEwCXh4

10 days worth of updates.... well at least the main parts

                                            Post XIV

 I cannot believe it has been 10 days since I last wrote on the Blog. I guess not having internet in the house has kind of made me forget that it exists. I find it surprising how little I miss the internet. Considering how much time we all spend on the bloody thing, one would think that you might not know what to do with yourself without it. But, that has not been the case really. I have barely even noticed not having it. It means contacting the family is a massive pain, but actually sending a letter is like 100 Yen (60p) so that’s the best way to stay in contact if I am honest. Might cancel the internet altogether (I would have to send A LOT of letters in a month to rack up a 5000 Yen bill in stamps – what I am currently paying for internet). But, at the same time, I really want to keep up the blog, as much for myself as for any readers that might happen to give it some time. So, I will decide about the internet later.

 So what have I done of late? Well, my student had her speech contest. It’s a very strange phenomenon the speech contest, and there seems to be two strategies: recite good English, or, recite bad English but cover it up by being extremely enthusiastic. A bit like the Eurovision song contest, it seemed less about the quality, and more about the performance. Which is a great shame as it meant that my student, who speaks extremely well but who is rather shy, didn’t place in the top three. Despite confidence building exercises, she just felt too uncomfortable with big gestures and smiles, and so, despite her near perfect speaking, she was overshadowed by the extra energetic students. I am still so so proud of her, and she has come an extremely long way since I met her (all down to me of course………..) and she has a lot to be proud of too. Not many people would have the confidence to speak a foreign language for 5 minutes, whilst being judged, to a room full of people at just 12 years old. I’ll also miss the practice sessions themselves, weirdly, as it was a great time to goof around and make a fool out of myself, and really try and help her to realise that the most important part of the contest was just to enjoy it.

 Other than that, I played a gig with some of my teachers at the island music festival. It was a good laugh actually, though we played really cheesy JPOP songs which probably didn’t do my ‘street cred’ much good. The kids liked it though. A bunch of the kids had various performances too, and so did a lot of factory workers, which meant that the festival was a miss-match of thrash punk, JPOP, Jazz Dance, Hula and acoustic Bruce Springsteen covers in hybrid Japanese/English. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this al got a bit much by around 4 so I went for an Onsen again. The Onsen on the island is interesting because it always has tourists (Japanese and otherwise) in it, which means it doesn’t have a ‘locals only’ type of feel to it which they often do. It also means that there are often people who want to talk to you. I find it very strange that once you are naked, everyone is perfectly comfortable to speak to strangers, foreigners and so on. The conversations are often similar, but it’s always nice to meet new people.


 I’ve also been to Okayama, which is a city with a castle, cool garden, and a shit ton of skate shops, guitar shops, second hand shops etc. Really cool little place and I’ll definitely be going back frequently as it is not too far from me!

 Well all of that was a bit of a stream of consciousness, but I don’t really have the energy to check it. I hope it’s remotely comprehensible, but perhaps not. I wanted to fill people in on what’s been happening, and though I have missed a lot of things out, I think the post is way too long as it is. So, to sum up, I’ll end with a cliché hope that I can post more frequently etc etc, and I think this week should be less busy than average, so perhaps I actually can post more frequently this week….

A quiet afternoon at school, and time to share some thoughts

                        Post XIII

Still no internet, but I don’t mind. I have been really busy at work and also socialising with the teachers so I have barely been home anyway. The workload is rather relentless, but the work is also rewarding so I don’t mind. My only issue is that sometimes I have very little to do during the school day, but once school finishes and I should be going home, all of a sudden I am given a million things to do. But yeah, I guess I have to fit myself in around the Japanese teachers schedule because they are significantly more busy than me. 

School lunch is always the hardest part of my day. I have eaten things that taste gross, things I didn’t even know were eaten, and things that the very concept of is gross. Example: the theme of one meal was “mother and child”. Which meant that we had an egg and chicken rice dish, served next to three whole fish about 4 inches long. I don’t like eating whole fish, but I have gotten used to it so I was like “fuck it” and just cracked on. After biting in to it, I quickly realised that the fish was very heavily pregnant, because it was full of tiny eggs. This is without a doubt the most disgusting thing CONCEPTUALLY I have ever eaten, but actually it didn’t taste that bad I have to say.

 Lunch is often quite fun too, there was this one kid goofing around who stole one of the other kids muffin and refused to give it back. I have like zero authority over the kids because I goof around as much as they do, so instead I offered the other kid “my” muffin. The little joker who stole the muffin’s face instantly washed out. You could see that he was thinking: Oh shit, sensei doesn’t realise I am joking and thinks I have actually stolen the kid’s muffin. He promptly returned the child his muffin, and gave mine back to me, with a look that said “alright kill joy” on his face. Then, he suddenly realised that I had two muffins. Then, it clicked that I had sneakily stolen his muffin, pretended to be offering my own to the child, but all the while offering the little jokers muffin. The look on his face when he realised he has been beaten at his own game was priceless.

 I also had my first Nabe party. You all cook a stew together on the kitchen table, and just continuously add food and drink beer until you can eat and drink no more. So that was pretty awesome. So much so I think I will buy a Nabe pot in time for winter. Other than that, it’s been practicing for the music festival, training my speech contest student for tomorrow, keeping half an eye on Scottish independence, sleeping whenever I get the chance, and parties. I often think “I wish I had more time”, but then I think to myself, well I am already just doing all the stuff I want to do anyway, so what would I even do with the extra time?

Little update

                 Post XII and a half

Today I showed my secondary school kids some of my Pokemon cards. They found them really interesting, but it turns out the cards were older than the kids. Holy fuck did that make me feel old!!  

I still have no internet, because the hotline for setting it up closes at 6, and I have rarely left school earlier than half 6 at the moment because of demonstration lessons coming up (a bit like ofsted in Britain). 

Also I am now in a band with some of the other teachers. We are called 'raw power' and we are going to play anime songs and Disney covers at a small festival on the island. The irony was lost on the teachers, unfortunately but unsurprisingly I guess...