in which red and white striped paper lanterns fight an intangible gloom
Thursday May 29
in which red and white striped paper lanterns fight an intangible gloom
listening to a glorious old track by count basie called how long blues, complete with dusty old vinyl sounds. love those old rekkids. there is a festival here this weekend, on chuo dori – the long street that the school is on. workers have been busy lining the street every 2 metres with long red and white striped paper lanterns lit by electric globes. it’s amazing how some simple lighting can transform a place. walking at night has become a stroll through an asian wonderland. i am looking forward to checking out a little festival on my home turf! it’s been a pretty quiet week here in ol’ ‘yoshida, after all last week’s partying. the gloomy weather finally let go (tentatively) yesterday and we actually saw blue sky. there is a typhoon loitering to the south though, it apparantly plans to ruin the weekend’s weather. i’m begining to doubt the existence of a japanese summer. it’s been 5 months now, and all i’ve seen is cold weather, snow and rain with maybe 2 weeks of spring thrown in during april. even now, my gas heater is on and i’m wearing a jumper and thick socks. have not yet found a home for the kittens, the deadline is this weekend. we have put up posters at all the school branches and talked to lots of people, called city hall, followed up every lead we can. in my more desperate moments I do consider just taking them to a vets and putting them down. but then that would cost a lot of money plus i’d feel REAL bad for a long time. the latter worries me way more than the former. i just want to find them a cool, safe home where they won’t go feral and piss off even more locals. it seems that cats here are more unpopular than the north koreans. been feeling as gloomy as the weather this week. it was nice to see the sun for a few days. maybe we’ll get lucky and get a third day of sun before the rains come back. marc left me the “satanic verses” by salmon rushdie, i think i might start tackling it over the weekend. when i was in india a couple of years ago i read his book “the ground beneath her feet” and quite enjoyed it, especially since so much of the book was set in india. i think the book was pretty influenced by salmon’s friendship with U2, and they ended up writing a song based on a song from the book. but i digress, as i often do. the satanic verses, some light weekend reading ( ! ) to distract me from the more burdensome tasks at hand. getting rid of the kittens and their mother. * sigh.
Earthquake
Monday May 26
earthquake
thanks for all the calls and emails asking if i’m OK. the news is: i’m OK! i did not even feel the earthquake – the epicentre was off the north east coast, quite a long way away from here. i didn’t know it had made international news untill I got home after some late night ramen with my work crew and found 2 messages on my phone and a couple of emails waiting for me! i was in class in tsuru when it happened, and only found out an hour later when the next students came in, full of news. but we have been getting quite a few little tremors lately, i have started to realise that those bumps and shakes i feel when i’m home sometimes are not caused by the neighbours, they are actually little quakes. here is an article from Japan Today Online:
TOKYO — A powerful earthquake rocked northeastern Japan on Monday, causing blackouts and forcing authorities to temporarily shut down highways, railways and even Tokyo’s main airport, more than 400 kilometers away. Eight people were reported injured. The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 and was centered 64 kms below the sea floor off the coast of northeastern Miyagi prefecture, Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. Seven people were injured in Iwate Prefecture, one in Miyagi Prefecture and a house caught fire in the city of Ichinoseki, Iwate, in the quake which struck at 6:24 p.m. Felt across a broad area of the northern part of Japan’s main island, the quake sent shoppers at a mall in one northern town rushing out into the streets. Some areas were suffering electricity and water outages immediately after the quake, local officials told NHK said, but had no further details. Major highways and railways were also closed as officials checked for damage. A road buckled in the northeastern city of Ishinomaki and a house in the city caught fire, said local disaster official Norio Kumagai. At least two prefectures had established emergency disaster headquarters. “The quake was felt over a very broad area,” said Central Meteorological Agency official Noritake Nishibe. He said it was the strongest quake in Japan in about two years, and that aftershocks were expected. He suggested the impact of the quake might have been mitigated by its depth. NHK, which broke into regular programming immediately after the quake, reported that the earthquake was strong enough to knock people over in the city of Sendai. A fire was also reported in Sendai, but it was not clear if it was related to the quake. The quake was strong enough to shake items off shelves in several towns near the epicenter and cause tall buildings to sway in Tokyo, 420 kms to the south. Authorities at downtown Haneda airport briefly suspended takeoffs and landings to check the condition of runways, and bullet train service to northeastern Japan was also stopped. The Meteorological Agency said there was no danger of tsunami, powerful waves that can be stirred up by seismic activity. Japan is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, puled by four tectonic plates, the huge slabs of land that cover the earth’s crust. (Wire reports)
and you will know me by the trail of dead
Sunday May 25
and you will know me by the trail of dead
listening to …and you will know us by the trail of dead very loudly, they are helping me work through my foul angst brought on by…
my landlady and her mother (who spent yesterday erecting a cat proof wooden fence around my balcony, including tall dead tree branches covered with sharp little sticks, and who today sprayed enormous amounts of foul smelling cat deterrent liquid on the plants around the balcony)
the despair of losing a really cool friend to an australian big drinking bush boy replacement who I would never have anything to do with at home, and who I will have to sit next to and work with 5 days a week for the next 12 months. god i hope he settles down and starts to understand japanese ways a little.
the stress of having to find a decent home for the cat and her 5 kittens, knowing how stressed the cat is gonna become during this important time for the kittens who are still suckling.
the fact that i have not seen a blue sky for 3 weeks
google penalised me when i tried out a “prevent right click” code on my photo pages so i have lost my high rating and have been relegated to the lowly depths of search engine obscurity again, despite the fact that i removed the code.
some arsehole sold my email addresses to a porn spammer and now i get about 3 hard core porn spams a day with graphic html bodies showing women with semen all over their faces and huge penises in mid spurt, and beastiality and teen sex all with genitals hanging out. it’s so damn wrong.
think i better call home. sorry to be such a bore. next weekend i will be closing this chapter of the weblog as it goes into the archive section. i look forward to a fresh start. i feel like i jinxed myself by writing about the unbearable lightness of being.
rain, kittens and an article on murakami takashi
Wednesday May 21
rain, kittens and an article on murakami takashi
rain. rain….rain…………..grey skies……………………….overcast………………….cloudy………………………….. rain………cloudy…………………………rain…………….cold………………………………..rain……………………….cold……….
did i mention that i haven’t seen the sun for, oh, about two and a half weeks? and that it’s been really cold. *it’s killin’ me, folks. it’s killin’ me. whatever happened to spring?
kittens are growing fast, eyes are open and they are wobbling around their box checking out the dark distant corners. every so often one of them falls out of the box and can’t get over the flap to get back in and all hell breaks loose. enough squawking to wake the neighbours. which is not a good thing since my neighbours are my landlords who i haven’t quite gotten around to telling yet. i don’t think i will ever quite get around to it…. but then they’ll probably work it out on their own anyway, soon enough. it’s gonna be noisy.
tomorrow night is marc’s farewell party, he has another 2 days of teaching left. he just got an article published at http://www.lab71.org/ (go to the cute manga mouse head image link) and also in a very glossy art literature magazine published in canada. FACING DEFORMATION: CHARACTER COMMODITIES, MURAKAMI TAKASHI, and our POSTHUMAN CONDITION by Marc Steinberg. cool, huh. it’s been a fairly social week, tonight was the first time i ate dinner at home.
birthdays, farewells, engagements and an amusing tumbling new yorker
Sunday, May 18
birthdays, farewells, engagements and an amusing tumbling new yorker
it’s been a great weekend indeed.
on friday night I headed out to shiroi, in chiba – on the other side of tokyo, to visit my friend christian. he has been living and working there for over a year now and has just taken on a job (with interac – the same company) to teach on a tiny tropical island 1000 kms south of tokyo. it’s called hahajima, and is part of ogasawara – a group of ecological haven islands managed by tokyo. he leaves next weekend (as does marc – with whose camera i took most of the pictures here). on friday he played a gig with a very good local singer songwriter, tatsuya, at the local live house called annie’s house. it was his birthday, and a sort of pre-pre farewell party so the little place was packed with other foreign english teachers, shiroi city hall education and community workers and local musos, and it was jumping. to be honest, i am really envious of what they’ve got going there – it’s a great little scene, with a bunch of great people. so he was playing his gig, and half way through tatsuya walked off the stage and made christian do 2 solo’s (he plays cello), and then they brought a big cake out and the whole place joined in a rowdy and drunken “happy birthday”, and he was showered with gifts. it was really beautiful. and then, the night got even better when the gorgeous yassou (you can see his pictures in the tokyo photo pages – mostly shinjuku, i think – we went drinking there one night) took the stage with his girlfriend to announce their long anticipated engagement. they wanted to wait to tell all their friends together, at annie’s house. tears all round. even i cried. it was so beautiful, the room was chock full’o'lurve. i even found myself fancying someone (finally). hope he breaks up with his girlfriend soon, dammit. in the mean time we can hook up under the pretext of music exchange…
we were there till late, doing very messy karaoke and playing congas badly. finally masa (annie’s house cool dude – amazing artist and photographer) called last drinks and the stayers stumbled outside and prepared for the long journey home (a 20 min walk). half of them were on bikes, so it promised to be an eventful journey. halfway home, the inevitable (delightfully amusing) happened. mark – a very drunk newbie from new york, convinced that he could ride even though he could not walk straight, excitedly turned his head back to start telling us a story, waved his right hand in the air letting his left hand steer the bike straight into the gutter. he flew over the handlebars and landed upside down on a wet slope of tall grass. christian and i both almost dropped to our knees we were laughing so hard. the others had all gone on ahead a little and wheeled back to see what the clamour was. mark picked himself up very graciously and climbed back on the bike insisting between embarrassed chuckles that he was fine. he rode with a wobble all the way home with christian and i on either side of him, sidestepping the crazy swerving bike with hands at the ready to catch him. i think we laughed for 15 minutes straight. mark had to work at 8.30 the next morning, apparantly he made it there but i don’t know how. it would have been ugly.
bladerunner-esque shopping
the next day yousuke, christian and i headed in to tokyo after a big and unusally healthy homecooked breakfast/lunch of scrambled eggs with tofu, salad and coffee. we caught the subway straight to akihabara – the electronics district. christian wanted to look for a laptop and i wanted to price the canon digital camera range – I’m looking at the g3 or the a70. the g3 is twice as expensive but is very cool. akihabara is a crazy place, very busy, full of laneways and blaring loudspeakers and hundreds of electronics stores – both news and second hand. the suburb is one whole big market place for everything electronic. tiny shops with boxes of spare parts, you name it, you’ll fiind it there. i was expecting there to be a floating car full of replicants just around the next corner. lots of neon, lots of cool dudes and dudettes and a surprising number of foreigners. one very cool thing about akihabara is that you are not allowed to smoke in the streets – there are large smokers cafes where you have to go. they have big airsuckers but it still stinks! after a couple of hours of unsuccessful roaming – christian had to reassess his computer budget, and I still couldn’t decide whether to go with the a70 or the g3, we were feeling pretty fucked so we caught the train to shinjuku to find a cheap place to eat and drink beer. we went back to that same izakaya that we went drinking in a couple of months ago. stayed there till 7.30 then headed over the highway bus station where i caught the bus back to fujiyoshida with 2 crying girls in the seat behind me. surreal end to a great adventure.
marc’s last week and the slow painful farewell begins
tonight marc had a video party at his place. stephen, his replacement teacher arrived this afternoon so gary, nick and i wandered over to his hotel and walked him to marcs apartment (soon to be stephens). mikiya and kumiko, 2 of our adult students (a married couple who met in new york) came over as well as another friend of marcs, a dj called hareo (i think) so we sat around, chatted, devoured snacks and beer and watched my own private idaho. *sigh. i’m really going to miss marc. i think this is one of the hard aspects of this type of work – everyone is so transient. anyway, stephen seems a nice guy, and he seems to have good taste in music (he knew of wilco, much to my surprise). one of the first things he said to me was “so you’re from vegas”, and i said yeah, much to gary and nicks confusion. i had to explain that a common name for brisbane, my home town, is bris vegas. he’s an adelaide lad. likes to drink beer and didn’t know that karaoke was a japanese word. ha ha ha.
zen and the fine art of living lightly
Wed, May 14
zen and the fine art of living lightly
i have decided i must read the unbearable lightness of being again. i have read the book before, and seen the movie (featuring the very hot Daniel Day Lewis) and to be honest, can’t really remember what the main point was other than lots of gratuitous sex scenes and melodrama, although i did enjoy them both at the time. but in the past few months, a unfamiliar lightness has descended apon me. i have become very patient, i like to do things slowly and carefully. i see beauty all around me. i feel creative surges constantly. there is not the tiniest smidgeon of stress in my life, for the first time in years. it’s the most remarkable feeling. walking to walk the other day, my heart was just singing with the joy and simplicity of my life, and i thought wow! this must be “the unbearable lightness of being”. it’s a very zen thing really. learning how to just BE. be happy, take a day at a time and stop to smell the flowers. i hope it lasts a while. i hear its very good for your health.
server stats
i checked my server stats tonight. now this is fairly astonishing. 518 individual visitors have visited 635 times (that makes 1.22 visits per person), with a total of 36699 hits, all since May 1. my previous average was about 130 visits per month. wow. pretty cool, huh. better improve my writing skills and get the slide show on the photo page fixed up!
:: current fave sounds :: thee more shallows, ida, songs: ohia, badawi, the frames, the reindeer section, g love and the special sauce, arab strap, dry and heavy, ben kweller, cat power, sleater-kinney, trail of dead, josh rouse, otha turner and the afrosippi, the anubian light, the herbaliser, the vines, the hives, yuichiro tanaka
itchiku kubota, yuki atae, afternoon beer and japanese star wars
Sunday, May 11
itchiku kubota, yuki atae, afternoon beer and japanese star wars
yesterday fumie (our japanese manager) took marc, nick and I out for a day in kawaguchiko and saiko. marc only has another fortnight, so we’re all doing as much as we can together in the time that he has left. he and nick had never been to itchiku’s kimono musuem and after listening to me lament itchiku’s passing, and his musuem, they decided to go there yesterday. once again, i was so incredibly inspired by his work and by the man himself, that i couldn’t sleep last night. my mind was racing in a million directions. the world has lost a truly special gift. there is to be a memorial function at the museum on June 15, including a Noh performance, so nick and I are gonna go. here are some photos of his work, the musuem and the man.
newsflash! boo-boo the cat is having her kittens right now in my cupboard.
Tuesday, May 6
12:36 am (i guess that makes it wednesday)
newsflash! boo-boo the cat is having her kittens right now in my cupboard. oops. it wasn’t meant to happen this way. she wasn’t supposed to have them inside my apartment, goddamn it. * sigh. but it’s kinda exciting. wish i could see them, she’s buried herself in amongst a pile of towels, I can’t see a thing, just listening to tiny little mewing noises. what the hell am i going to do with them? oh dear. oh dear. oh dear.
3:10 am OK, she’s had 5 tiny little bundles. Birth is such an amazing thing. she looks exhausted but has such a sweet, proud look on her face, and every time I poke my head in she purrs loudly. what the hell am i going to do with them.
local celebrity
so it seems that i have become something of a local celebrity. some time ago – about 2 months back, our lovely diligant, wily, hardworking administration manager, Emi-san, approached me with a coy look in her eyes.
Miss Emi: “Martine sensei, i am wondering if you would be interested in doing a small interview in the local advertising paper?
Me: “oh, for unitas? um…..ahhh…”[intensely hopeful look from Miss Emi]“well…what sort of interview…to talk about the school?”
Miss Emi: “no, about you. front page always has picture of nice lady. you can talk about unitas too”
Me: [trying to control look of terrified horror and repressing all unseemly comedic desires in the face of Emi's earnest gaze, nodding] “oh, really. nice lady, huh. what do you mean nice lady? er… do i get to keep my clothes on?”
Miss Emi: “oh yes, you would be the weeks madonna, nice ladies talk about themselves and where they work”
Me: [brows now furrowed and bottom lip firmly clenched between teeth] “um, well… i don’t know… [trying a new tack] can they interview marc? he’s so much more photogenic than me….”
Miss Emi [head tilting sweetly with an "i'm not taking no for an answer" look in her eyes]” noooo. it has to be a nice lady like yourself, martine sensei.
Me: [smiling weakly] “oh. ok then. sure, i’d be happy to do it”
so the weeks turned into months and here i was thinking, hee hee hee, she’s forgotten. but no. she never forgets a thing. this girl knows every single thing about every one of our 300 or so students – where they live, family members, scheduling clashes with piano lessons, etc. so last monday, i got a call from her when i was teaching in Tsuru. “the interview for the madonna is happening tomorrow.” i braced myself for serious awkwardness and discomfort in front of the camera, and that weird disconnected feeling I get when I have to stand up in a crowded room and say something that makes sense. [yes, I'm not one for public speaking...]
after all my foreboding and endless costume changes, the journalist turned out to be a lovely lady who asked lots of great, intelligent questions and who just wanted to do some point and shoot photography of me in front of an alphabet chart. we got on like a house on fire, and sachie (my translator for the interview) was having a great time trying to translate some fairly abstract concepts. phew. so far, so good.
the paper came out on the weekend. the fuji marimo, with a circulation of 63 000. there i am, grinning inanely in all my front page glory, beside a huge picture of a bunch of preschool kids at a hanami picnic, and above a quarter page article. they sent me 5 copies, and i didn’t really think much more about it other than “cool, dad’ll be chuffed even though he won’t understand a word of it”.
today we had our first day back in school since the paper came out. and well, wouldn’t you know it. every single class, every single student. even the shop keepers and coffee guy I frequent. “OHHHHH, Fujimarimo Madonna!!! sugoi, desu ne! you are in paper, i show you to all my family and friends” [all accompanied by lots of awed "so, desu ne's" {yes, that's right} and "suteki desu ne's {stylish, yeah?}"]
and i kinda like it that now people here know who i am.
Sunset sounds – 7 pm
Sunday May 4
Sunset sounds – 7 pm
tenki subarashii desu ne. what a beautiful day. thank god it’s actually getting warmer for real. just came back from a glorious sunset walk, kids everywhere playing outside, the sky a beautiful musky pink, the mountains look soft and majestic. listening to some great music (serge gainsbourg desu yo), i have my kitchen window and the sliding doors to my little patio wide open, letting the sounds in. kids playing, dogs playing, birds chirping. everyone’s happy.
spent hours last night converting the entire site from frames. my little frames experiment ended up being a complete pain in the arse, shoulda listened to the webmasters. they’re a stupid idea. had more visitors to my site in the past 4 days than i have in the past 4 months, thanks to lonely planet. phenominal. wish i could work out what’s wrong with the slide show in the gallery page. weather is far too nice to be a computer nerd today. god, i’d love a lovely chilled glass of a nice white wine – maybe four sisters sauvignon blanc – right now. fit in with ze parisienne sounds. ce la vie. shoganai. oh well. guess a cup of iced green tea will have to do. i’m still on the wagon. been about a month now. i’m gettin’ thirstyyyyy.
Junichi Nakahara – the godfather of manga?
Saturday May 3
Junichi Nakahara – the godfather of manga?
kawaguchiko is the lovely tourist town that borders fujiyoshida. it is a small, sprawling village, spread out around kawaguchi lake – one of the fujigoko (fuji five lakes district). it’s full of fishermen, hotels, onsen, restaurants and, most excitingly, it’s home to some of the coolest art museums in Japan. itchiku kubota’s incredible kimono museum (set in stunning gaudi-style architecture), a music box museum, and the junichi musee. i visited the kimono museum in the first week i was here, and it blew my mind! this week, i heard that itchiku had just died. i teach one of his grandsons, itchitsugu. when mika, my japanese co-teacher asked him about it, he stayed quiet and was very visibly upset. i was pretty damn sad too. his work is incredible, as is his life story, and it really inspired me at the time.
today, i visited the junichi musee, very cool indeed. 600 yen well spent. I have to go back there loaded up with cash so i can buy some of the beautiful prints and books. I did buy some very cool postcards to help ease the pain till i go back…. Junichi Nakahara, 1913-1988, born in Kagawa prefecture. he worked as an illustrator, among others for the magazine ‘Shoujyo no Tomo’ and as a serious printmaker. in the 1920s and 1930s his illustrations of women and girls with big eyes were famous – today the typical style of Japanese anime and managa drawings. he is widely considered as a forerunner of manga art. (borrowed this so better footnote it…. Merritt, Helen and Yamada, Nanako, “Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints 1900-1975″, University of Hawaii Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8248-1732-X)
I picked up a speil at the musee and this is how it goes: In the midst of the tempest of WW11, Nakahara persisted in bringing a gentle message to young women with his free and graceful illustrations: to be individuals, to be gentle and considerate, to care for the weak…[blah blah blah] and be sensitive to beauty. the military authorities eventually banned his work, but immediately after the war, in a period of dire poverty [here his story parallels Kubota's] he started up his own magazine, which he called soleil. he did the development , editing and design himself, creating a vision of his personal dream incorporated into real life. the next year he started the magazine himawari, and after a study trip to paris, junior soleil. he continued to found magazines up to his last, onna no heya, all dedicated to realizing his unique world and vision, all dedicated to women. his illustrations, published in the magazines, have a beauty that reaches across time, and their rich emotion and intelligence captivate all. this exhibition presents the work and aesthetic legacy of nakahara from before and after the war, and one comes away from it with the feeling that his work possesses a latent modernism that makes it just as vital today as when it was created. And an understanding of how he became the point from which a wide variety of creative artists were launched.
yabusame
Tuesday April 29
yabusame
if anyone ever has the chance to view japanese horseback archery, do not miss it. it’s an incredible sight.
so there i was, sitting by lake kawaguchiko on a windy, sunny day, watching edo horseback warriors in full ceremonial battle regalia, galloping at high speeds while drawing their bows and arrows on their enemy. incredible. yabusame. horseback archery. a much anticipated event, indeed. my friend nick and I laughed that we felt like we were in an episode of monkey, or some japanese version of crouching tiger, hidden dragon maybe because the stuff they were doing was almost mythical in nature. exceptionally highly skilled horsemen and women, galloping in full heavy costume, with their hands not on the reigns, but on their bows and arrows.
the day started at about 11.30 – which is when we arrived, staking out a claim right on the rope barrier near to one of the targets. we had to sit through about 2 hours of onstage entertainment before we even caught a glimpse of a horse. but a lot of it was quite good. a couple of taiko performances (always exhilerating) – one featuring an elementary school, all were tiny little 6 year olds. lots of karaoke style singing performances from lovely kimono clad ladies, and some traditional dance ceremonies with fans and ribbons. the wind had been fairly gusty to start with, and it quickly got very bad. the ceremonial pole-length flags flapped around quite frenetically making quite a noise. every so often they threw some simple fireworks up in the air for some noise and bright flashes. the anticipation was building….
at last, after devouring the last of our pizza flavoured chips and okinawan sweet biscuits, the real thing began to make it’s way down the course – and the (by now, huge) crowd jumped to it’s feet and pushed to the rope barriers. very glad we got their early or else we would have seen only a horse tail or 3 maybe. so it began with a parade of lots of traditionally dressed historical characters. the Shogun, sitting high and looking most impressive indeed. shinto buddhist monks and nuns in gorgeous black and white and gray robes and head dresses with long side flaps and curly toed shoes. various court officials and ladies, and then the riders and their mounts. they paraded up and back, then disappeared while the court officials set up the targets…
the track was about 250 metres in length and only about 3 metres wide, with 2 targets set up at equal distances. the riders were divided into 2 teams, the first had 5 members and the second 4 (including the only woman competitor). the first targets were fairly typical archery (circular painted) targets, propped up on bamboo stakes, located about 3 metres to the left of the course. the crowd all sat on the right side, looking out over the track, the targets and their seated court official minders, the lake and the mountains. stunning view.
with the banging of a large drum and the signal wave of 2 large hand-held fans, the first rider kicked in his heels and began the gallop down the narrow course to the first target. the course was made of a fine dark dirt and the wind picked up what the horses kicked up and we got showered by fine dirt every time a rider went by. which only added to the excitement. nick, gary and i were kneeling only 3 metres away from the horses and you could feel the ground shake. the targets gave off a resounding crack when they were hit, and the crowd was boisterous with lots of cries of “segoi!, segoi desu ne!” and “subarashii desu ne”.
the second round of targets were just blank squares of wood and i was quite disappointed until i was told that if they get hit by an arrow, they literally break into pieces. and so they did, with such a crack i was suprised the horses didn’t take fright. these horses were trained beautifully. all types of horses, too – ponies, thoroughbreds, quarterhorse crossbreeds.
sadly i wasn’t able to borrow marcs camera for the day, and my point and shoot cam may have chewed the film (i find out tomorrow) so i don’t think i’ll be able to show you any pictures. if the pictures do come out ok i will take some digital pics and upload them first chance i get.
electioneering etc
Friday April 25
electioneering…
goddamn! i hated election time in australia but i hate them even more here! the most popular form of electioneering is about as subtle as a hard-on in a womens onsen. each of the candidates rig up a car with loud speakers and light boards, get a team of 4 excitable young folk to drive around all day (dressed in all white with white headbands tied in a knot at the back), stopping for a few minutes at intersections and train stations and schools and shopping centres, and best of all, in quite little laneways, screaming through the (very loud) PA that everyone has to vote for their candidate. The propoganda includes repeating the candidates name over and over again, with liberal sprinklings of arigato gozaimasu (thank you very much) and hai, dozo (yes, go ahead) onegaishimasu (please). They are allowed to do this from 8 am, and for the last 5 days that’s how I have been woken. To the sounds of screaming 10-words-to-the-second election gibberish! They park outside my house for 5 minutes, and do drive by’s every 10 minutes or so. Not only has it disturbed my sleeping habits, but my classes have been constantly disrupted as the kids all run to the windows to scream and laugh and stick their fingers in their ears. Everywhere you go you can hear the echoes of the gibbering PA screamers. There are about 40 candidates for his city council election, and they all have roving cars. It is the most disruptive form of campaigning I’ve ever seen and I think the entire town is anxiously looking forward to Sundays election so that life can get back to normal.
night hanami…
last night the unitas crew decided a spot of night hanami would be fun. so we all jumped in cars and convoyed down to Kawaguchiko, to the Fuji View Hotel park grounds. the fuji view is a ritzy hotel (the emperor showa and his wife stayed here once) with spectacular gardens and a small golf course. it’s a very popular spot for hanami because the gardens are so lush and well cared for, and because they have easily the most spectacular, enormous weeping sakura’s (cherry blossom) that i’ve seen yet. it was 10 pm when we finally got there (via a hilarious stop at the 7-11 combeni where 7 people including 4 gaijin invaded the snack and alcohol section with gusto and indecision), armed with self heating sake cans, beer and a pile of rice snacks and chocolates and we settled on a blanket under the biggest weeping sakura tree there. In amongst the gardens were heaps of other flowers of different colours and shapes, and the whole thing was lit up beautifully. apparantly night hanami is a quite popular activity. the sakura take on a very eerie flourescent glow at night. beautiful.
earthquake paranoia
there’s been a lot of talk lately about how the kanto region (which includes this area and tokyo) is well overdue for a big earthquake. the last one was back in the 1920′s (killing 146 000 people), and they usually come around every 70 years or so. the authorities expect that around 30 000 people will die in the next big one, and that’s even with the massive earthquake planning the g’ment has done here. it’s kinda freaked me out a bit and i now make sure I go to sleep with a full set of pajamas on, with a bottle of water by my futon, next to the room divider timber frame (they say you have to get to a door way, or similar structure). but to live a life of fear is to live half a life. so i try not to think about it too much.
Hanami and washed out picnics…
Sunday April 20
Hanami and washed out picnics…
The Japanese take their hanami very seriously. Taken literally, hanami means flower viewing, and it is the very serious business of sakura (cherry blossom) viewing as an annual ritual. Large groups of families and friends assemble under a cherry blossom tree with an elaborate picnic and some music/musicians and they indulge in an endless array of food and beer and wine and sake. This afternoon I went to the Yanagisawa family hanami, and from the moment Gary K and I stepped in the front door, the house was abuzz with frenetic activity! Sadly the heavens opened and it was a cold and wet day, so the hanami party moved inside to their tatami room.
With a small outdoor BBQ fired up, and an indoor hotplate going the house was full of food smells. Mostly meat (yaki-niku: the stench took a while for this little herbivore to cope with) and grilled rice balls: yaki-onegiri and grilled vegetables. The beer and wine started to flow as did the conversation, they had some english and of course, Akihiko and Gary B were able to translate for us, while Gary K and I used our limited Japanese to the best of our abilities. It was lovely! We stayed on for hours, it was great to hang out with a big, loving family and to be made to feel so welcome.
The most difficult thing at these events is actually trying to leave, the extended farewells seem to take about an hour to get through. All the niceties and formalities of Japanese manners mean than there is endless bowing and smiling and domo arigato gozaimas and mata ne and kyoskete and onegai shimas and various other phrases used over and over.
Anyway, Gary B and I bid our farewells and drove to Kawaguchiko for a pizza party as part of the local international club’s monthly event. Happily met about 4 americans ( 2 from Santa Cruz, 1 from New York state and the other I think was mid-west somewhere) and a heap of really cool locals. We were the last to leave, spent hours talking to Toshi and Fumie, the lovely couple whose restaurant we were in, and a fairly well known ceramic artist/potter by the name of Shigeo Honda. They are all so cool, it was such a joy to spend time with them. And miraculously, I stayed on the wagon.
yadayadayada
Saturday April 19
of course the weather has turned bad again. there is an old japanese saying, one of my adult students tells me, that the weather patterns here are based on the following law: 3 days of good weather, followed by 4 days of bad weather, and that you can’t say that spring is here untill you experience 3 warm days. so we got 3 great days. maybe that’s why japanese weather forecasters are so damned annoyingly accurate. it has nothing to do with precision, years of scientific study and poring over thousands of maps covered infunny squiggles. they have just absorbed the old traditional proverbs. god, the weather here is, for the most part, grey. very depressing for a solar powered gal. ne’er mind. got a fab day of social blundering to participate in tomorrow. Hanami (cherry blossom viewing piss up picnic) with Akihiko’s extended family and the 2 Gary’s, followed by a pizza party at kawaguchiko with a bunch of other gaijins and their japanese families. how am i going to stay on the wagon with such temptation? feeling a little frisky now that it’s warmer… a beer or three and who knows… i might end up rolling around on a jetty with someone I’ve just met. or worse. someone i work with.
crap
Saturday April 19
of course the weather has turned bad again. there is an old japanese saying, one of my adult students tells me, that the weather patterns here are based on the following law: 3 days of good weather, followed by 4 days of bad weather, and that you can’t say that spring is here untill you experience 3 warm days. so we got 3 great days. maybe that’s why japanese weather forecasters are so damned annoyingly accurate. it has nothing to do with precision, years of scientific study and poring over thousands of maps covered infunny squiggles. they have just absorbed the old traditional proverbs. god, the weather here is, for the most part, grey. very depressing for a solar powered gal. ne’er mind. got a fab day of social blundering to participate in tomorrow. Hanami (cherry blossom viewing piss up picnic) with Akihiko’s extended family and the 2 Gary’s, followed by a pizza party at kawaguchiko with a bunch of other gaijins and their japanese families. how am i going to stay on the wagon with such temptation? feeling a little frisky now that it’s warmer… a beer or three and who knows… i might end up rolling around on a jetty with someone I’ve just met. or worse. someone i work with.
not a good teacher
Monday April 14
Today I was not a good teacher. In fact, I wasn’t good for much at all. The skies were grey. My thoughts were firmly fixed on irrelevent fantasies of greener pastures – an endless bank balance, endless travelling with well informed, interesting, reckless adventurers. Do you ever stop dreaming of greener pastures? Or is it the curse of my life? To be endlessly restless, dissatisfied. To dream a dream, work to attain it, then tire of it quickly. Routine, it is anathema to me. It is killing me already, in this lovely job in this lovely country. I need to plan a strategy to kill the appearance of routine. How to keep the air fresh in my heart and soul and brain. One thing is for sure, I have to stop spending so much time on this computer. Net addiction is cluttering my head with useless, time wasting gobbledegook.Time to get back to the present, here and now. Language learning, book reading, creative projects, writing. Learning how to be a better teacher. So, I hereby decree. This computer will now be turned off and will stay off till Friday. The challenge is on. Wish me luck.
Broadband heaven
Tuesday, March 18
So I think I just finished uploading the last of the photo pages. I hope all the links work, coz I just can’t go back there again for a while!! I am loving broadband – I get to watch ABC headline news from home, and listen to Australian radio and watch rage and music clips and movie shorts. I just watched the news then actually and heard the devastating news that Bush has decided it’s time for war. What right does he have. It’s evil, the whole thing is so wrong, he is such a war monger.
On a happier note, I am so loving my life here. Loving teaching, loving the place, the people, the fun. It’s still snowing heaps, which is quite unusual as the Cherry Blossoms are due out in about a week or so. The whole country is involved in making calculated guesses on what day they will bloom. They have 3 weeks of crazy outdoor drunken revelry to celebrate the arrival of spring, it’s called Hanami – literally, flower viewing. Everyone flocks to the parks for picnics and gets outrageously drunk and flirty. Can’t wait! Christian and I are planning a Hanami party in Yoyogi Park on the 29th March, hope it stops snowing by then. Spring! I can start riding bikes around the lakes, and start using my body again. Although I have been pretty active, despite the hibernation factor. Ice skating (i’m quite good at it, if I do say so myself), Skiing, Karaoke (yes, drinking all that beer and lifting the microphone os very strenuous!). I have been so distracted with getting broadband on and catching up with the world that I have completely stopped studying Japanese and have lost a lot of my vocab, so now that the site is updated and I am kinda bored with the internet again, I can get back into Japanese practice.
Having a cheap phone option has been a joy – I pay 23 yen a minute to call home, so I’ve been able to ring home a bit, talk to Dad and the family a lot, and of course friends. If you want to call me, all my details are on the contacts page.
2:33 am, time for bed. Oyasumi nisai.
back in the Matrix
Sunday March 2
Sitting in the glorious comfort of my own apartment with the internet finally connected! So I have been updating the site and getting excited about a bit of a redesign… Yahoo have a huge plan going here where you sign up to Yahhoo Broad band and they supply you with phone service as well, and it turns out that it is cheaper to use Yahoo BB to call internationally than it is to make local calls, so once I get the phone figured out you can all expect a lot more phone calls…
It’s been a month since I last wrote here, I’ve been in Japan for 69 days. Every day is kinda cool, different experiences and ideas. I love it, and have decided that I’ll probably be here for at least 3 years…
Yesterday was a quite a hoot, I went into Tokyo to see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I had been out drinking with Dorj (a crazy Mongolian guy) the night before so slept through my alarm and didn’t end up getting onto the bus for Tokyo till 1 pm, by which time it was fairly pissing down. The traffic was hell, the bus took a little over 2 hours get into Shinjuku in central Tokyo. It’s a crazy place, packed with people and neon and controlled chaos. Wandered into Shinjuku east and ended up getting quite lost in the maze of alley ways – which would have been fun if not for the torrential rain and no umbrella.. I found a little restaurant – warm and dry, ate some food and asked for directions to the cinema – it turned out I was literally around the corner from it, and my timing was perfect, the next screening was due to start in 30 minutes and a line had already started. By the time the doors opened, the line was probably about 500 people long – the cinema was HUGE! In every way, quite an experience. Looking around I saw about 5 other westerners which was kinda cool – I never see more than about 4 together in one place at one time here in Fujiyoshida.and that’s mostly the people i work with…) The movie was great, i floated out ofthe cinema into dinner rush hour chaos and more torrential rain and flashing neon reflections on the wet ground. Finally found an umbrella then realised that I had missed the last bus back home and got lost again. Had a mild panic then saw a large warm coffee house through the rain, slipped in to one of the front tables over a coffee to ponder my options. My phone rang, it was Dorj and Gary, they were on their way into Tokyo in Gary’s car to go dancing, and would be in Shinjuku in about 30 minutes. Yay! Some company, some more sightseeing AND a lift home in comfort. Love it!
First we went to the gay district so Gary to check out the action (yes, he’s the gay one…) – went to a karoake club, it was fabulous and hilarious to see all these queens mincing around with microphones and falsettos. I was soaked, my shoes and socks were literally soaked so I slipped them off under the table and sat in barefeet for an hour or so. Putting them back on when we left was a clammy experience..as you can imagine. When we got outside it there had been a considerable drop in temperature – it was around zero and still raining. Had the potential to be a very miserable night but we just had a ball. It was too crazy and surreal to get depressed by! We then headed into the notorious foreigner nightclub strip called Roppongi. I had been warned that there would be heaps of american gi’s on weekend leave form the many US bases here, but there wern’t too many to be worried by. You could spot them a mile away with their crew cuts. We wandered into a few clubs and ended up spending most of the night in a great little bar called Motown. They played mostly requests, everything from the clash to kylie to very very cool hip hop and african stuff. it was owned by this big black african guy who wandered around all night making sure everyone was happy, he even had a boogie or ten. a man who loves his job!
Roppongi was far more exciting than I had ever inagined . I was so surprised – I guess I had expected some sleazy trashy violent ugly scene like Surfers Paradise or Cairns or Kings Cross (and it has that potential I’m sure), but it was a truly, eccentrically cosmopolitan melting pot, with people literally from all over the world. In fact, Roppongi can be summed up in one word: eccentric. A mish-mash of africans, europeans, arabs/middle-easterns and asians as well as japanese on top of the much reviled american gi’s. I didn’t see any violence of any kind, just lots of really drunk people all having a great time. I loved it, it was such an eye opener, although it may well have been the company i was keeping that provided this positive perspective…. There was one couple (among many) mincing it up on the dancefloor having a great time, they turned out to be flight crew from amsterdam, we danced up a storm with them and hugged when they left. There were heaps of africans and afro-americans (very sexy dancers), europeans, etc and they all wanted to talk and dance and laugh. It wasn’t even particularly sleazy, just fun. We danced all night, and drove home in the dawn.
internet radio
Friday May 2
internet radio
so i was a little musically bored this morning. i have listened to all my music a thousand times over and didn’t feel like making any particular selection. And then I remembered the possibility of internet radio – but I did not wanna hear the bland deep-throat, bad top 40 crap. so it was with some trepidation that i typed in “internet radio online streaming africa” … and viola, there it was: a veritable goldmine http://www.live-radio.net/info.shtml. right now i’m listening to a glorious, quality live feed of radio m broadcasting from tangier, morocco. other options include eygpt, south africa, kenya, mauritius, angola, namibia, senegal, gabon, ghana, madagascar, rwanda, the sudan, tanzania, togo, tunisia, uganda, zimbabwe – and then you could move onto:
Austria Belarus Belgium Bosnia Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Faroe Islands Finland France Germany Gibraltar Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malta Moldova Monaco Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom Vatican Yugoslavia American Samoa Argentina Aruba Australia Azerbaijan Bahamas Bangladesh Barbados Bermuda Brazil Brunei Burma Cape Verde Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Ecuador El Salvador French Guiana French Polynesia Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Honduras Hong Kong India Indonesia Iran Israel Jamaica Japan Kazakhstan Korea (South) Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lebanon Malaysia Martinique Mexico Montserrat Nepal Netherlands Antilles New Zealand Nicaragua Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Puerto Rico Saudi Arabia Singapore Sri Lanka St Kitts St Lucia Suriname Tahiti Taiwan Thailand Tibet Trinidad & Tobago United Arab Emirates Uruguay Venezuela Virgin Islands (US)
and then there’s always my epitonic blackbox (www.epitonic.com)
general crap
so this weekend I get a long weekend as a part of the national Golden Week vacation. golden week is a bunch of special days/public holidays located close together so they are usually just made into a week long national holiday. this year though, the special days have all fallen on or around the weekend so many people are only getting a few days off. i was hoping to get away somewhere but after last weekends big spend in Tokyo with Dixie, I have about 8000 yen to last till next payday on the 9th. enough to get buy on but not enough for an adventure. so it looks like i’ll be hanging around fuji. probably just as well, the traffic on golden week is notoriously hideous! the weather has been weird – sunny, warm, cold, rainy, windy – all in a day. kinda like melbourne, i guess. marc leaves in less than 3 weeks, his replacement is now a 24 year old australian guy from adelaide called stephen. i saw his photo – polo shirt and bad hair. he’s a footy jock who drinks rum and listenes to barnesy and triple M radio in his spare time, i just know it. god. it’s gonna be awful. boo boo is now huge. she’s gonna pop really soon.
i submitted my website to the lonely planet website for consideration on their subwwway links page, and they put a mention up on their thorn tree today page – i checked my server stats last night and wow, so much traffic. i’m feeling kinda shy now. all these international strangers checking out my little site. it is very cool though. tried to add some new pics to the gallery slideshow and managed to mess it up competely and now it doesn’t work at all. i’ll have to recode the whole damn thing. maybe that can be my golden week project.
Its just so cold
Sun, Feb 2
The weather is STILL my primary obsession, even after close to 6 weeks. Japan is in the grip of the coldest winter they’ve seen for many years. Just my freakin’ luck! Fujiyoshida seems to always be about 5 degrees colder than Tokyo. Thursday week ago it snowed 25 cm’s, then on the following Monday it poured and poured then we had one lovely warm(ish) day so pretty much all the built up snow and ice had gone… then this last week, we’ve endured minus 10 degree nights and maybe zero degree days, albeit with beautiful blue days and clear skies . My bathtub water pipes froze for the first time, so i had to make do with swift sponge baths in the kitchen sink. I must have gone through about 18 litres of kerosene in one week. (Kero is what powers my heaters.) Anyway, today the snow is back and the sky is heavy and gray. I always feel a rush of excitement for a while when I see that it’s snowing, standing at the window watching the way it moves with the wind and lands on the trees or the clothes line or the roof next door.
Have decided that this time of winter hibernation MUST be used wisely (and not just vaguely contemplated…). I have thrown myself into Japanese language study and intend to start writing a lot more – travel writing, short stories, some poetry, and also to learn heaps more about website design and construction. The first few months here will be lean times indeed, as I pay back the debts I incurred getting here. The exchange rate is kinda fucked up since the Aus dollar is getting stronger against the yen and my money here isn’t worth as much as i have hoped at home. oh well. Getting paid once a month is a tricky thing to budget for. I have set up a fairly thorough test budget in readiness for my first paycheque (Feb 10) and hopefully I will survive and have enough left over to have some fun and mischief.
Speaking of which, I went out to dinner last night with Marc, Mizaho and Gary to a great little restaurant/bar called Retreat. It’s a tiny place, down a little laneway off a carpark off another little laneway… about 5 tables, 2 on the ground in a tatami room, 2 large long sit up tables and one romantic little corner for 2. It’s got a very multicultural, exotic decor – lots of Tibetan thanka cloth paintings and prayer flags, and stepping stones on beds of black pebbles at the entrance, the bathroom and going into the back room. The music was amazing, mostly really cool contemporary japanese electronic music. One in particular caught my ear, by a band called Blasthead, the cd was called Landscape.
Today I think I will pretty much stay at home all day, watch the snow from the warmth of my heated apartment. Study Japanese, and get all philosophical and thoughtful. Watch out! Looking forward to having coffee with a Japanese buddhist monk tomorrow. He’s a friend of Aki’s, and we are going to visit him on the way to work in Tsuru.
40 days and nights
Friday, Jan 31, 2003
Today is my 40th day in this crazy country. How can it only be 40 days? It doesn’t seem right. I feel like a different person altogether. The language is starting to make sense, I just lived through a week of below 9 degrees celcius nights and survived, and the old people in the laneways around my apartment are starting to say hello and smile…
The past month or so has been full of ups and down, the joys of exploring a new culture and language combat the homesickness and loneliness. I am counting down the days to the 10th of Feb – my first whole paycheque! I’m broke as a bastard, and I had to say no to an invitation to Tokyo this weekend. Christian is arranging a small posse of Australian cronies on an outing to Asukaya and Shinjuku. I’d love to go but I just can’t justify spending any more money, goddamn it. Actually, I went two weekends ago (to Tokyo) to meet up with Christian. (He used to work at the Zoo and has been living here for about a year now.) We had a ball, wandering around the fabulous shopping district of Ginza. All the great international fashion houses (Dior, Chanel, etc) have shops here, and there is enough neon to make the night seem day. Gary (my american workmate) drove me to Tokyo, and joined us for the day. We drove back home at about 9 pm (an hour and a half), had a rest then headed out again to see some bands. One of the Japanese teachers (Akihiko) is a drummer in a band with some Americans and Japanese. It was a 5 band night, and they were all great. The whole night was fantastic, and I met some great, like minded locals – lots of musicians and music lovers. I felt right at home, drank tequila and beer and danced and loved every second.
I’m settling in well to the job. The kids are a joy and always fill me with a tender glow of satisfaction and pride when they learn something new. A typical work day goes something like this:
10 / 10:30 am: get up, have some brekky (cornflakes with banana or toast and avocado with freshly percolated coffee), have a shower if I’m feeling brave… [***see below]
11 am: I usually leave the apartment by about 11. I either:
~go to the local cultural centre to use their free internet computers,
~or go to my school (named Unitas, by the way) for Japanese lessons (Thurs)
~or (fortnightly on Wed’s) go to a local kindy to teach huge classes of 4 year- olds the alphabet, greetings, numbers and colours. It’s a Unitas work thing.
1 pm: Start work. My days vary from 7 classes to 4 classes. When I’m not teaching, I am working on lesson plans and researching classes, text books and grammer with the other teachers in the staff room. The classes vary in size from 2 to 10, and in age from 2 to 60 (most classes are arranged by age, so you don’t have adults with kids or teenagers…). With the babies, we just teach them the alphabet, how to count in English, colours, body parts, fruit, greetings, and little English songs like Twinkle twinkle, little star; I’m a little teapot; the hokey pokey; The Kookaburra song (kookaburra sits in the old gum tree…), etc. They are just gorgeous. Their mothers come to class with them, and they have just as much fun as the kids do.
We work in 3 different locations: Fujiyoshida (where I live) is the local headquarters for this district (although the main Unitas headquarters is in another city, about an hours drive north, called Kofu.) Tsuru is a small town about an hours drive south, and Kawaguchiko is a lovely touristy village about 10 min’s drive east. I teach in Tsuru on Mondays (the day I have 7 classes), and in Kawaguchiko on Tuesdays and Friday. Kawaguchiko is a much wealthier area, and the kids there are typical rich kids, well educated, good thinkers and a pleasure to teach. Tsuru is mush poorer, and the kids do tend to be a little wilder. I am reminded of my nephews Darcy and Fraser by many of the more boisterous kids, which makes me much more patient with them. Actually, to be honest, I like kids with a little spirit, so I enjoy the feistier classes. We have a lot of fun, play games and get quite physical. The Japanese culture is extremely education oriented, so pretty much all kids take at least 3 or 4 different night classes each week, on top of all the homework generated by their different courses, and from school. Many of them are quite exhausted by the time to get to me in the evenings. So I like to let them blow off a little steam and have fun as they learn.
The others teachers are lovely, lovely people. I teach with 4 other foreigners (3 full timers and 1 part timer). Joe is my boss, a Canadian guy, aged 35; Gary is a 38 year old American who defies the stereotypes of Americans by being a lovely man and has fine taste in film; Marc is a groovy 26 year old Canadian who loves music and film, like me – we have very similar tastes in music; then there is Gary B from California, the part timer. He’s a fairly typical obnoxious yank but we get on well enough. The Japanese teachers – 3 full time and 3 part time, are just wonderful people. Akihiko, a 26 year old male who lived in Perth for 3 years, is a muso; Sachie, a 26 year old woman who lived in Wollongong for 2 years, these are the 2 who I work the most with.
9:15 pm Finish work. I actually have to punch in a time card as I arrive or leave work – for the first time ever. It’s quite hilarious. So we punch out at around 9:15, and head off…
As I am not particularly financial at the moment, I usually just go home most nights, and potter around my flat. I always have things to do. I cook dinner (pretty much the same sort of vegetarian meals I cook at home in Australia), learn Japanese, or play on my computer, or read, or watch movies. On Fridays, I usually go with Gary to a bar that is on our way home (a 7 minute walk from home door to work door). Have a few beers (at around $7 AUD each) then head home half pissed. Because we don’t start work till 1 pm, we all stay up till quite late, and I usually don’t go to sleep till well after 1 am. Some nights I might go to one of the teachers flats to watch a movie or have dinner, and sometimes we’ll go out to a restaurant, but we’re all a little poor at the moment – the other teachers went away for their holiday (Dec 28 – Jan 5) and spent more than they should have…., and of course it’s mid winter and time to hibernate.
So that’s a typical work day.
*** ONSEN, and Keeping clean in below zero temps…: I have a gas hot water system and stove, and my bathroom is the coldest room in the apartment because the gas fittings are poorly fitted and have a gap around the pipes…letting in the cold. The bathroom is a tiny little thing – there is the walk-in shower part, and you have to fire up the system before you can get any hot water. The shower is a handheld nozzle, and the only wall fitting/holder for it is at knee level, on the gas system. So, you have to get undressed, then turn on the gas at the wall, crank the pilot light, turn a few more knobs to get the water running through the system, then turn on the water and wait about 5 seconds for the hot water to start coming out. By which time my feet are usually blue and I’m shivering violently… It’s quite hellish and I only do it once or twice a week… Next to the gas system, in the other corner, is the very (erm…) quaint bath tub – a cube shape, about 2.5 ft wide/deep/long. It’s a great way to have a bath – you sit tucked in with your knees up, immersed in water to your shoulders. Lovely! I tend to have about 3 baths a week, a much less stressful way to wash. ….And then on days when it’s just too cold, we go to the Onsen – massive public baths / hot mineral springs, where the change rooms are fully heated (floors as well as air), the shower rooms are heated and the big springs are about 38 – 45 degrees…they are fantastic! Spa, sauna, steam room. Yum. Of course you have to shower and wash before you go into the pools. The Onsen are a huge part of Japanese life, the whole family goes, although the baths are segregated. They have indoor and outdoor pools, and the outdoor ones are just spectacular when it snows. Especially if you go at night, when the lamps are on and the steam is rising. They are always set in beautiful gardens and all the ones in this area look onto Mt Fuji. Anyway… that’s 2 whole paragraphs on how I keep clean… yes, i’ve been drinking beer…
Snow
Thursday, 23rd Jan, 2003
Today it snowed about 25 cm’s – a fairly heavy load in anyone’s language! It seems that whenever it snows in the morning I tend to sleep in… everything is so quiet! And yes, today was no exception. I was supposed to have a Japanese language lesson at 11 (I am now having weekly lessons at work, learning how to not just speak but also read and write), and I slept in and ended up bolting out the door a little before 11, straight into the heaviest snowfall I have yet experienced! It was wonderful, such an amazing sight. But I am learning sadly just how inconvenient snow is. Yep, it’s looks picturesque for a day or 2 then turns to ice and sludge and dirty snow and everything is either wet or slippery.
Anyway, I reached Unitas and settled into the staffroom (where we have lessons) after turning on all available heaters and air-con (friggin freezing!) then got an email to my phone saying our teacher couldn’t make it – the snow was too heavy… damn, i did my homework and everything! I thought it would be quite novel to try to sweep the snow from the stairs and landing out front of our building… and somehow I ended up shovelling snow for about 2 hours. My boss Joe turned up not long after me to announce all classes were cancelled! Yay. The crew (other staff – Aki, Gary, Marc, etc) all turned up and we were all out shovelling snow…having snowball fights (my first ever) and making a snowman (also my first ever) and then watched passing kids destroy our beautiful, fat, peace-sign waving snowman named Henry. Little fuckers. He now has no head and no arms. But he will rise from the clumps of shapeless snow, to live again.
Joe lent me his special limited edition DVD of Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings..I swear, the dvd is like the ring, I constantly feel its pull. It is fantastic – they have re-edited the film to include another half hour or so of footage that wasn’t in the main release. And long doco’s on “the making of” that are far more interesting and insightful than the crappy doco’s that came with the Australian first dvd release. Yes, i have watched the movie 3 times in 1 week, and pretty much all of the special features accompanying the movie. Ahhh. The Two Towers is released here in Japan in Feb some time. Can’t wait!
Blue
Tuesday, 14th Jan, 2003
Feelin’ blue. Today is the 3 week anniversary of my arrival in Japan. 21 days. How can this be? Only 3 weeks. Strange that such a short time feels like so much more. It’s been mostly good but today I feel like I’m in a kind of blue limbo. There are times when I feel like an absolute fraud in the classroom. of course, I will learn to become a better teacher and how to explain vocab and grammer to kids who can’t speak English! And then, there’s the OTHER language issue… living in a country where you cannot speak the native language is certainly a trial.
And of course, the culture is so different. The slipper thing is gonna drive me insane. I wore my shoes onto a carpeted area at the onsen on the weekend – next to the doors, where they keep their shoe lockers. A big no-no! I miss my friends very much. Tonight especially. They say the first 3 – 12 weeks are the hardest, after the excitement of arriving wears off, and before you feel comfortable – with some language skills, and after a few pay cheques… so i guess i’ve just hit the 21 day blues.
The weather is hard too. I’ve never lived in such a cold climate. Snow. Ice. It’s hard to get out of bed. But it is getting easier as I get used to it. worked out my budget for the next 2 years, but hell, I’m not gonna make as much as I had hoped! It is indeed quite expensive to live here, and of course, I wanna do nice things while I’m here, do some travelling and stuff.
Happy new year
Saturday, 3rd Jan, 2003
Happy New Year! This place – Fujiyoshida – is just amazing. Spent new years day at the sengen shrine, lining up with thousands of Japanese families for their annual pilgrimage to the local shrines to pray for a prosperous new year… The snow and ice is blowing me away. So this is what it is like…
Looks like it will be some time before i will have my own access to the internet which means no updating the website for some time. Such a shame.
I start teaching my own classes on Monday, very nervous. Day one is 7 lessons, starting with a bunch of 2 year olds. How do you teach them english? Hmmmmm. The mind boggles.
