JAPANEXILE

Toya snow festival! Probably the most entertaining of the lot actually! Obviously on a much smaller scale though. Craig and I had to come in early to help set up the tents for the various stalls around the place, other than that, although we were officially staff of the event, we didn’t really have to do anything. I managed to get a free sample of everything on offer food wise, often by just standing nearby or going behind the stand (as staff members are allowed to do). The last meal came when the mayor spotted me and insisted I come and eat with him. Sweet as the mayor is I can rarely understand a word he is saying, so it’s a bit awkward after the first few minutes. Highlight of the day was our attempt to win the first prize in the Bingo. Craig and I had 40 Bingo cards between us – which we roped Kenzo and Yuko in the help do all at the same time. The reason we bought so many was because the first prize was a Nintendo Wii, which I’d quite like, although not enough to buy one. Our hopes were dashed however when someone won the Wii before we even had a Bingo, Craig went home with an Umbrella, and me with a can of Kerosine. Which surprisingly everyone was quite jealous of, even if I was less enthralled. Final part of the day was spent playing on the slide and throwing sweets at the children from the top of it. A tradition at any festival.

We didn’t actually do much viewing on the Saturday evening – we probably should have, every one I asked said the sculptures look far better lit up at night. We had more pressing concerns however, as Cori needed to find some allergy medicine, and I was hungry. The former problem was solved when a random woman saw that we couldn’t find something, so when we told her we needed a pharmacy she conveniently said she was going there herself at that very moment. A convenient if surprising coincidence! The latter problem – that of hunger was solved pretty easily as well, going to the trusty Potato Circus, which was far busier this time so the all you drink option wasn’t quite as hasty. After dinner we went and had a brief viewing of the smaller ice based sculptures in Susukino (as opposed to the snow ones in Odori park). I wasn’t really in the mood for appreciating blocks of ice though so decided to do all my viewing on Sunday with the crowds of people.

Up bright and early at the crack of noon on Sunday I headed out to Odori park. I walked the entire length of the exhibitions which took about 90mins, partly due to the distance, more so because of the hoards of people and slippery path. Only stopping to take photos and the occasional investigative trip to the food stalls. They had some pretty great stuff going actually, at any sort of public event like this in England you get the odd burger van, here you can buy freshly cooked crabs, as well as a great variety of fantastic looking meats. I only indulged once though, having eaten a curry about an hour before I felt a little guilty. In honesty though I didn’t think much of the Snow sculptures, they are very impressive don’ misunderstand me. But I couldn’t seem to get quite as excited about it as they rest of the people there. I just kept thinking to myself – it’s a carved pile of snow. One of the shows I saw on the Saturday was mildly entertaining, people in silly costumes and incredibly high voices dancing around on stage – but it gets old.

Decided this was too long for one post, so now I will present to you the exact same previous post - but in three parts!

Snow festival weekend! In the space of three short days I was privy to three separate snow festivals in various parts of Hokkaido, starting with Otaru on the far northern coast, moving south to the main event, the Sapporo snow festival, and finally home to Toya, for a a slightly smaller but still entertaining event. Otaru was a previously famous fishing centre, and is still famed for its Sushi and just generally being an interesting place to go. I didn’t actually know much about the festival itself before going - candles was the only explanation I had been given. The preceding Wednesday I had unfortunately made the error of eating a twice defrosted burger and then spend the next 24 hours being violently ill. Although by the Saturday I had fortunately all but recovered, my obvious good health was not enough evidence for the powers that be in Toya. Apparently there was a risk that I had a virus and would go around infecting children - whilst I can understand during the work week - where I actually do spend a lot of time with kids, I didn’t really have much intention of socializing with infants on my weekend away. So the logic behind their argument of why I had to come back to Toya on the Saturday evening didn’t fly well. The Sapporo snowfestival is world famous, hundreds of giant and often complex sculptures made from ice and snow line odori park. This year is probably the only opportunity I will ever get to see it, so in the end I was forced to argue back, and in the end, I was able to go fortunately. This also touched on perhaps the greater issue of should the Board of Education have any say in what I do in my free time. I don’t mind a certain amount of interference and mothering - its quite nice to be looked after at times! And they do admittedly give us a lot, but even so, my time should be my time in my opinion. But coming back to the snow festivals.

On the Saturday Craig & I actually went to Sapporo first, had a brief look at the snow sculptures whilst waiting for Cori to arrive who had come up on a different bus. Once Cori arrived we decided to go over to Saturn land first. An area of the festival a 30min bus journey out of town. The main attraction being a giant ice slide - which had sounded pretty cool. A cool it was, although we didn’t actually have time to slide down it. Seems plenty of Japanese people also thought the giant slide was pretty cool and were far more willing to wait in line than I was. We only had time to go through the ice maze in the end, would have been nice to try all the other activities on offer, but we were supposed to be meeting Yuko, Hiromi and Setsuko over in Otaru at 1pm.

We didn’t make it there for 1pm. The bus journey back to Sapporo station was slower than expected so we missed the train.It was at this point we thought up of an ingenious plan for me come back to Sapporo instead of going straight home. Basic idea was, leave my bag in a locker in Sapporo station, then only realize what I had done once arriving in Otaru, necessitating a return to Sapporo. The Toya crew agreed, but not on the timing issue, they thought it better to go straight back then and come back to Otaru - missing both festivals! Madness! So that didn’t happen and I had to force the issue, which I wasn’t proud about doing, but it was necessary.

Setsuko used to live in Otaru I believe so she gave us a whirlwind tour of the area. Starting off with a brief spot of sushi. I’ve been amazed by how little sushi I’ve eaten since I’ve been out here, only a handful of times so far. Stuff from the convenience store just ain’ that good and is expensive to boot. And anytime I am in the city with someone something else also takes precedent, like having an all you can eat and drink option, which sushi bars are not famed for. After lunch we wondered through the streets after Setsuko eating any free samples we came across, having a look in some glasswork shops (another thing Otaru is famous for), and finally ending up in music box shop. Which was pretty interesting. Haven’t actually mentioned the festival part yet so should probably do that. The local residents carve out hollows and generally reasonably basic shapes out of the snow lining the streets and roads and place candles inside, which all light up to beautiful and magical effect. Particularly nice was the canal, with many thousands of candles floating on it. It truly did look beautiful, though I’ve realized this post isn’t really conveying that too well so will try and put up a load of photos of it. About 7pm Craig headed back to Toya with the rest of the crew whilst Cori and I went back to Sapporo to actually have a proper look at the snow festival. (And only looking at the snow festival, no drinking allowed remember, even if this probably was the busiest – and potentially the most exciting, weekend Sapporo has in the year.)

Not remotely related to the snow festivals. Mainly just an explanation of why Setsuko used to live in Otaru. Her husband is a teacher. Teachers in Japan don’t get to choose where they work, they are told, at which point they need to up and move to a new place, often great distance apart. So Setsuko has seen a far bit of Hokkaido. I think you live in each place for only a few years. Was wondering if this would work in England – somehow I doubt it.

My blog has been a bit neglected of late, as has my Kanji study due to Spring holidays. But have made a promise to myself that I won’t start any new work until I have got the blog up to date, this is also going to mean finally upgrading to the new version of wordpress, as well as a reorganisation of the photos on the site. I think I am going to go the flickr route, as there are some cool plugins that fit my needs quite well. The current photography section will go, and be replaced by a “best of” for each month, which will be the photos included in each post plus any others I took that turned out well for the month. Will probably take me a good week until I get everything sorted though.

So once again I have to start a post on here with an apology, I haven’t been taking care of my blog as I should do. I at least have a decent excuse about it though. Kanji. For those of you that don’t know Kanji is one of the three scripts the Japanese use in their writing system along with Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji make up the bulk of any Japanese text, for almost all verbs, nouns and adjectives, hiragana is used for verb endings and such, katakana for words taken from foreign languages and names for which the corrrect Kanji is unknown. So in the aftermath of my “half way through the year” panic I have become slightly obsessed with Japanese and in particular Kanji and the wider Japanese writing system. But firstly my little panic - I’m over half way through. Which prompted me to re evaluate what I wanted/want to achieve in the time I have left. And the answer fell firmly on on thing. A deeper understanding of Japanese language. My language skills are sorely lacking in my opinion, I can get by in day to day life well enough, I even talk to my Japanese girlfriend almost entirely in Japanese, though undoubtedly with many mistakes. Like most people involved with foreign languages my passive understanding greatly exceeds my ability to speak, which is fine to a certain extent, though I have become truly frustrated with my inability to express myself.

So following on from that I started researching what would be the best way for me to move forward. I looked at textbooks, in particular the Genki series of books, but then I remembered my intense dislike for textbooks, so that went out. In my searches what I found was that Kanji is something that is going to have to be learned eventually. For every new word I learn I am going to have to relearn the Kanji for it sometime in the future in my quest for Japanese fluency and literacy. But how best to learn Kanji in the shortest time possible? Japanese people start learning from the Kanji from the age of 6 and only finish when they are 18. Students of Japanese take 4 years of full time study. I don’t have that sort of time. What students both native and foreign regardless of age share is their method of Kanji learning; ie, writing the characters out over and over and over and over until they stick. I started down this route, taking making an hour to remember 4 characters, only to forget them by the next day. It wasn’t working, not to mention it was boring as hell. So back to the internet it was to research the problem.

I found an answer.

Or rather, two, firstly a book by James Heisig called “Remembering the Kanji“. This book throws the normal order of learning to the wind and instead breaks the Kanji down into the elements that make each character. Using these elements as many characters as possible are introduced. Then a new element is introduced. Using these elements as protagonists in a story the reader (at first the author does it for you) devises a mnemonic and imagines a story in their mind as a key to remember the writing of the Kanji. Its quite hard to truly explain how well it works. But my own progress is testament to it. In approximately 5 weeks I have learnt the meaning and writing of 1184 characters. Which as pleased as I am with that number it is not to say it has been easy. I spend on average 4.5hrs a day studying. Each new Kanji requires about 5mins to think a solid story through. And of course reviewing is important, which is where the second answer to my Kanji question came. Reviewing the Kanji is a website set up by a reader of the book to aid in the reviewing of Kanji using the tried and true Leitner system. If a card is answered correctly, the system asks you again the next day, correct again, and the interval is increased to a few days more and so on. If a Kanji is failed, it goes back to the start and is restudied. Its simple but there is no way I could have made the progress I have without it. In addition to this system their is the ability to save and share your stories with other followers of the book online, which is invaluable for the more obscure stories you are expected to come up with, for instance, today I struggled greatly with the keyword “brush stroke”. The elements I was given were “ceiling” “sprout” and “shovel”. Good luck making a memorable one out of that.

But in general this system is working incredibly well and I will continue to put everything I can into it. I hope to be finished with the 2042 general use Kanji within a month or so, then I will start (hopefully) with the same fervour toward learning the readings of the characters and other aspects of the language. I do have a plan in place but I will save that for when I have started it properly. But my original point - reason I haven’t updated - Kanji.

None Kanji related Toya news, lets see. Most obvious - its Spring. Without a doubt. Last snow was about two weeks ago and it has all but melted around us. Quite sad, I shall miss the snow, but am nonetheless most definitely looking forward to warmth. Plus its so beautiful here in the sun. Along with Spring has come our Spring holidays which started yesterday, we are heading down to Tokyo on the 26th and then I am heading on to Kyoto on the 31st. Returning to Toya on the 7th. In the meantime we are in the midst of moving house as our current residence is soon to be demolished.

Updates that I have unfortunately skipped over in writing this include…the Yukigassen - a professional snowball fight tournament, his might still get a post someday. The Sapporo and Otaru snow festivals will get a post since they were pretty big events for me. I decided to skip over my Christmas trip to Tokyo, most of the rest of it was eating and drinking anyway, and the trip to Yoyogi park can be included in my inevitable post on temples of Kyoto. The final casualty has been that of Taiko drumming and Yosakoi. Taiko deserves its own post, Yosakoi - not much to say. Coming back to my panic I decided that my time is better spent learning Japanese than dancing. Which I still firmly believe. I will never forgive myself if I come back to England and don’t know as much Japanese as possible.

On Craig’s recommendation I thought I’d try out this program to see if it makes blogging just slightly less effort. As you may have noticed something is up with the photos in my recent posts - no idea why. And the photography section seems to be down and out for good until I find a new solution. The response I received from my host was "Well, its working on our end" Real helpful that.