Japan part last

o7/31/2009

In our last 2 weeks in Japan we:
1. Conquered Fuji (kind of)
2. Went to our first Japanese baseball game (It was fun for a little while but really -- who can stand watching an entire game of baseball? Not I! )
3. Saw the BEST art exhibit EVER (by Japanese artist Seiji Fujishiro who works completely by cutting and pasting various types/textures of paper)
4. Went inside the largest wooden structure in the world (Todaiji Temple in Nara City)
5. Said lots of goodbyes ...

But Fuji probably makes the most interesting story.

It is said that only a fool never climbs Fuji ... or climbs it twice.
We decided to start climbing in the dead of night so that we could reach the peak in time to watch the sunrise. Japan is, after all, the Land of the Rising Sun. Fuji has 10 stations - the first being the base and the 10th being the top - and most people (ourselves included) start from the 5th station. There is in fact a bus that will take you straight to the 5th station, and so began our trek. We started out at about 9PM and had a really pleasant hike and made good time all the way up to the 8th station. At the 8th station, however, we realized several things: it was cold and getting colder, it was wet and getting wetter, everyone around us had waterproof pants and jackets, and we were wet and cold and had waterproof jackets but regular pants. Not to be daunted by such things we pressed on anyway, only to realize that we were indeed ill-prepared.

By the time we left the 8th station (about 1:30 AM) it was so cloudy and wet that Ian's glasses were completely fogged up. It was still pitch dark outside so I was directing him where to walk as we made our way up. In most places it was so steep that we had to hold on to a guard-rope... unfortunately this guard rope was wet, which in turn soaked through my gloves, which in turn froze my hands and was definitely uncomfortable. We both had on gore-tex shoes and heavy smart-wool socks, but our feet were frigid nonetheless. We realized that freezing and blind is no way to climb a 13,000 foot mountain (not safely anyway) and so at the 1/2 way point to the 9th station we had to head back down.

On the way down we were hit with strong winds, then rain, then torrential rain, and finally, hail. It was really not ideal!
Luckily we made it all the way down in one piece and our Nikon D300 camera was none-the-worse for having been rained and hailed upon (we discovered that our waterproof bags were not actually waterproof). As it turns out, none of the people who actually made it to the peak that day saw the sunrise either because it was too cloudy!

So in the end, we really didn't miss that much by not going to the peak, we had a fabulous time (rain and hail aside!) and we're already looking forward to Fuji Climb part 2: the Revenge!

Japan part 8

It's now our last month in Japan (in fact we'll be back in the states in exactly 3 weeks and 3 days ... Taco Bell here we come!); but we have been keeping busy and our last few days are filling up fast.

This past Saturday we went to our on-again-off-again pottery class and I had my weekly taiko practice. My last taiko will be on July 25th, and I'm definitely sad to be leaving! I've already done a Google search for taiko dojos in Tennessee and it seems like there are exactly zero in the eastern US, so it looks like this might be the end of my taiko days (for now anyway). However, my group is having a going away party for me and Ian a few days before we leave, and that will be fun :)

Yesterday (Sunday) one of the English classes that Ian tutors took the two of us out to dinner in Kobe. We went to a "Viking-Style" restaurant ("Viking-style" = Buffet .... I have no idea where they got the name from) overlooking the Kobe bay. It was really cool; Ian and I had never been to the Kobe waterfront before and now we want to go back at least one more time before we leave!

This week is my last week of school. On Wednesday all the JETs who are leaving Nara (myself included) will be going to Nara city to have a farewell ceremony and meet the Governor of Nara prefecture. We will get our picture taken together and get some sort of "Nara ambassador" certificate - which is cool - but we will also have to wear suits (in 85 degree weather with 85% humidity) and make a speech in Japanese - not so cool.... Then this Friday is my last day of school ever, so I have to make a speech to my teachers (in Japanese) and a speech to the entire school during the closing ceremony (in Japanese).

You may think that after a year of living in Japan we would both speak Japanese really well, but this is not the case! We both have a pretty good listening comprehension level, but our speaking skills are next to nil. However, I have written a basic speech in Japanese that I can use for all three occasions with a few little word changes here and there. My governors speech is about how I enjoyed Japan and will miss Japan; my teachers speech is about how I enjoyed Takatori and will miss teaching, and my closing ceremony speech is about how I enjoyed teaching and will miss the students. ( Clever, I know. )

Next week we are going to make our last day-trip to Kyoto (we've been there handful of times over the past year but it doesn't get old!) and we are also going to climb Mt. Fuji. As luck would have it, one of Ian's students is taking a short family vacation to Fuji next week and said that we could ride along with them! We weren't quite sure how to get to Fuji & back (and we heard it can be pretty pricey) so it's super nice and convenient that they are going to drive us. As a matter of fact, almost everyone here has been INCREDIBLY nice to us, so before we leave we are also going to go on a big shopping trip for some little gifts for all the people who've helped us along the way during our stay here.

Anyway - the week after that we have another going away party hosted by another one of Ian's classes, and we are also going to see a Hanshin Tigers baseball game. Hanshin is the Osaka/Kobe team, and the pride of the Kinki/Kansai area of Japan! We've heard that the games are quite an experience ... not so much because of the team, but because of their die-hard fans. Sometime in there we also want to make one last day trip up to Osaka and Nara cities.

Then on August 5th we will be back in the states!

Japan part 7

05/19/2008

Since last november I have been taking drum lessons at a local community center. These are not American drums, but rather Japanese drums called "taiko" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiko).
They have religious origins, and temples will often call in a taiko team to play for a religious ceremony or festival. My taiko group performed on April 3rd at a temple near Nara city, for a festival celebrating Buddah. Here is a video for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEYMp94wZUQ

It was definitely great fun, and even though I wont have any more performances before we leave, I am still going to my weekly classes :)

April is also the start of the new Japanese-school-year. This means there is a lot of shuffling around of teachers. The way the school system works here is that each teacher belongs to the system as a whole, and the head-hanchos can move teachers around as they see fit. A teacher can put in a request, or refuse to move, but the board of education does not have to honor their wishes. Teachers can be moved after one year, or 14 years... they never know for sure when it will happen! They're given about 3 days notice, and during those 3 days all the teachers in Nara-ken who are moving must pack up all their stuff and unpack again at their new school. Thus the begining to middle of April was full of welcoming ceremonies and goodbye parties of various kinds.

Towards the end of April real classes at school finally start ... but then during the first week of May there is a string of National Holidays known as "Golden Week" - which basically amounts to a 5 day weekend!

All of Japan gets Golden Week off so traveling is typically busy and expensive during this time ... so Ian and I decided not to go anywhere and just relaxed at home. It was very nice :)

In other news - right now Japan is in the middle of a swine-flu scare. A group of students from Osaka went to Canada for Golden week and one of them returned with swine flu. That student was on the volley ball team at her high school, and there was a volley-ball match between other Osaka & Kobe highschools .... and now there are over 100 cases of swine flu in Osaka / Kobe (hand-washing using soap is not common amongst the students!) and every single school in Osaka is closed for the week. On top of that, they are screening every single passenger on-board any planes coming from the states or Mexico, and if just one passenger has a fever, that passenger and every passenger around him will be quarantined in Tokyo for a week! I personally think they are over-reacting, by, well, A LOT; but who knows. At least if swine flu comes to Nara I might get a week vacation!

Japan part 6

03/02/2009

Its the first week of March here - and that means several things in Japan: entrance exams for junior high school students, the end of the year for senior high school students, graduation, and the Naked Man festival! I'll start with the entrance exams ...

In the states the high school you go to is determined by where you live and everyone automatically gets in.

Here, however, all the junior high school students have to apply to various high schools and then take a rigorous exam to get accepted. Lots of these students go to extra "cram school" for 3 - 5 hrs every day after their regular school just to prepare for this test! In fact, its a lot like applying for college in the US! The security surrounding these exams is intense as well, with every teacher doing everything they can to make sure not a single snippet of information leaves the school before the exams start.

After the testing is finally over and everything has been graded, all the students who took the test (and their anxious parents) are invited back to the school to see the unveiling of the results. They all stand around in our courtyard and watch as some teachers on the 3rd floor of the building lower giant wooden boards covered in numbers. The numbers are the student's testing ID numbers ... if their number is displayed on the board, they got in! If their number is not there, they failed. There was a lot of joyful screaming and also a lot of crying that day...

Just in case a school doesn't get enough students during the first testing period (we didn't), two more are scheduled in mid & late march.

March 1st was graduation! Its basically what you would expect for any other graduation: speeches from the principal / vice principal / a student, lots of pictures, lots of crying, and the handing out of diplomas. The diploma-giving is one area where this is a big difference, though. Whereas in the states (where we celebrate individuality) the diplomas are handed out to the students one-by-one; here one representative from each home room (there are 6 total) comes to the stage and accepts one diploma with everyones' names on behalf of the entire home-room. I found that to be slightly odd, but sensical in a culture that emphasizes groups and teams.

In another cultural note - some of the JETs here recently participated in a very interesting festival called "Hadaka Matsuri"or in English: The Naked Man Festival.

As you may have guessed by the name, this is a festival involving (nearly) naked men. It takes place at the end of February, and basically what happens is at midnight a bunch of men wearing only socks and fundoshi (otherwise known as sumo-wrestler diapers) run together through a city, around a sacred pond, and into a temple where they try to grab a lucky stick. The man who grabs the stick will have good luck all year.

It's very hard to actually get the stick, though, because: 1. literally thousands of other men are also trying to grab it, 2. there is a lot of pushing and shoving 3. the Japanese mafia (the yakuza) sometimes make an appearance and punch people in the face (I was told that was indeed the case this time!).

All-in-all, this is a uniquely Japanese (and slightly dangerous) experience. Ian and I decided not to go and I think it was probably for the best. 6 of the other JETs here ran in the festival, and 2 fell down the stairs (by "fell" I mean were pushed), and another one got his head stepped on and developed an unsightly rash on his leg from rubbing against so many fundoshi.

Here is a link if you want to read more about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadaka_Matsuri

Japan part 5

12/18/2008

Teaching is going well for me - two weeks ago we gave out our finals and last week we did grading. I actually really enjoy grading the students essays because they say the funniest things. For example: one essay question was, "is it okay to marry a foreigner?", and one student wrote - "yes, because if you marry a foreigner you will have a mongrel baby. Mongrel babies look like angels. Many times I buy magazines to admire mongrel babies." Don't we all?

This week I have been anxiously awaiting my winter break! Since Christmas isn't a holiday here I DO have to use some of my vacation days, but luckily not that many. Dec. 23rd is the Emperor's birthday (and so a national holiday) and then our school gives us off from Dec. 28 - Jan 4th for New Years. It's quite convenient!

While Christmas is not an actual holiday here, they do still celebrate it ... kind of.

"Merry Xmas" signs are literally EVERYWHERE in stores and buildings and train stations (but we have yet to see "Merry Christmas"), and in some of the bigger malls (and Starbucks) they have been playing American Christmas music non-stop for the past few weeks!

Japanese families with small children will sometimes get a Christmas tree (always fake) and give their kids 1 or 2 presents each ... but this usually stops before the child becomes a teenager.

Couples also celebrate Christmas by going out to eat at the neighborhood KFC (which is also decked out for Xmas; including colonel sanders dressed as Santa).

So, while it is definitely different here; we are still getting into the Christmas spirit! Most recently we went to Kobe to see the luminarie festival.

According to wikipedia:

"The Kobe Luminarie is a light festival held in Kobe, Japan every December. It began in 1995 and commemorates the Great Hanshin earthquake of that year. The lights were donated by the Italian Government. They are kept up for about two weeks and only turned on for a few hours each evening. Each light is individually hand-painted. Major streets in the vicinity are closed to auto traffic during these hours to allow pedestrians to fill the streets and enjoy the lights."

Unfortunately, because admission is free and Kobe is running out of money, this may be the last year they do the luminarie, so we were really glad we had the chance to go.

Japan part 4

11/03/2008

The big news of the moment: we finally got internet! It took 2.5 months, but better late than never, as they say...

Recently the English department at school had a welcome lunch for me (only a mere two and a half months after we got here) - and they took me out to an American style restaurant. This, like most things here, wound up being very Japanese!

We drove from the school to a quaint little log-cabin looking house displaying Canadian flag and a sign that says "Country Kitchen". The seating inside was Japanese style (i.e. you take your shoes off at the door, sit on cushions on the floor and eat at very low tables). After we got settled a server brought out our first course: a stew with meat, beans, broccoli, bell pepper, peas, okra, and clams. Next came egg and tomato sandwiches, followed by rice-paper spring rolls and some mystery deep-fried-food (it was good though). Then the server came out with a pizza. This was very exciting for me because pizzas are not super common here and cheese is almost unheard of. It looked like a BBQ chicken pizza (complete with dark BBQ-esque sauce and some white chickenish meat) but when I took a bite I discovered that it wasn't Barbeque sauce at all ... it was squid-ink! And what I thought was chicken was in fact squid as well.

I don't really recommend it.

Next the server brought out pasta with a tomato-cream sauce topped with basil (or so I thought!). Upon closer examination it was actually pasta with a ROE-cream sauce and nori (dried sea-weed) on top! This sounds really strange but it was actually pretty good. Maybe not as good as tomato-cream and basil, but definitely better than squid ink! Then she came out with an American-style tomato-sauce and cheese pizza (yay!), and finally we all had some cheesecake for dessert.

Now, when I say cheesecake I don't mean American cheesecake; I mean a cake that is made with cheese. It's no New-York style, but it is a suitable substitute!

The other big October event was Halloween.

Halloween is not celebrated in Japan.

Some may say that's because Halloween is a purely western tradition, but I say it's really because:
1. there is no fluoride in the water here, so all that candy is more likely to rot the childrens' teeth right out of their skulls, and 2. many people here dress up in a costumey-fashion on a regular basis, so its really no big deal for them! (this phenomena is known as cosplay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay)

However, all this really means is that they miss out on trick-or-treating and all the department stores etc start decorating for Christmas a month earlier (they've already got the xmas music & winter desserts out at our local Starbucks).

Jas goes to Japan

I was a member of the JET Programme from August 2008 - August 2009 and I lived and taught in Japan for a year. Here are some anecdotes from my Japanese experience ...

08/13/2008

Here is your latest update from the land of the rising sun.

We are starting to get in to the swing of things here; every weekday morning we get up around 6:00 and eat breakfast together before I leave for work at 7:20. I have to be at school before 8:25 even thought it is summer vacation for the students right now and there is not much for me to do yet! (School starts on Sept. 1st). I leave everyday at 4:00 to catch the train back home. Depending on the train connections, it takes between half an hour and 45 minutes to get from our apt. to my school, so its not too bad. Also, all the teachers here are really nice; they all love to talk to me (and they all talk about Ian all the time) and one of them took me out to lunch the other day! She drove me around to see some of the local temples\ruins (of which there are tons!), and that same teacher wants to take me and Ian to a nearby archeological museum this Friday.

Ian has kept himself busy while Ive been at school - he is in charge of grocery shopping (and household stuff) and learning where everything is in our town. The other day he surprised me with iPhones! This is quite impressive considering it is hard to find things around here (there is a definite lack of street signs and those that are displayed are all in Japanese of course) and nobody in the store spoke a single word of English! (The entire transaction was done with the help of some third party person at a call center). And for those of you who were wondering, iPhones are very very awesome. :)

Yesterday Ian went out to get us collapsible bicycles. Aside from the coolness factor (folding bikes are pretty neat), they are the only bikes allowed on trains. Being able to take bikes with us when we travel by train is going to be a great help!

The train system here is super convenient as it is, and we're in a great location to travel around. We live about 5 minutes (walking) away from Yagi Station in Kashihara city, and from Yagi (by train) its only about 45 minutes and $5 to get to Nara city (the capital city of Nara prefecture, and famous for it's park filled with thousands of tame deer). In fact, we are going to Nara tonight to see the lantern festival that is taking place in the park! Here is a link:

http://damien.douxchamps.net/photo/japan/nara/tokae/

From Yagi it's also about an hour and $9 to get to Kyoto, 45 minutes $8 to go to Osaka, and about an hour to get to Kobe. So anyone who wants to come visit us will have lots of vacation options! However it takes several hours (and its rather expensive) to get to Tokyo from where we live; but anyone who is visiting can pick up a Japanese rail pass in the states ($200) and get unlimited train tickets anywhere in Japan for a week.

Speaking of vacations, some of you have asked when I have time off work. I get every weekend off (and if I ever do have to come in to work, they give me an extra vacation day later) and I have a few scattered 3 day weekends between now and November, but I dont really have any long breaks until late December - at which point I will hopefully be able to take a week & a half or 2 weeks off for Christmas break! Of course we dont actually get Christmas off here, but December 23rd is a national holiday (the Emperors birthday) and we will get several days off for New Years, so it should be easy to get a good chuck of Christmas holiday time!