JAPANEXILE

With Toya hosting the G8 summit next summer it seems to have garnered a lot of media attention. But in the end what can you write about a small lakeside town months before the event? What could possibly be interesting here? Why, us of course!

So far we’ve managed, one regional and one national paper, the Muroran Shinbun and another Tokyo based one I can’t read the name of. I also managed to make an appearance in another local paper due to my presence at a recent wine festival. The article isn’t about me, but even so, its more coverage, and one step closer to the coveted Project Trust ‘most media coverage’ award. The questions are pretty standard fair, how do feel about Japan, Toya, Japanese. Why did you come to Japan? What do you hope to accomplish whilst you’re here etc. The language barrier was as usual a problem, but Taiki did a great job of translating so we managed to get through. He never gets a mention in the articles tho, I feel kinda bad for him…

Last week out media coverage took a big leap forward, as we now have an entire 25minutes devoted to us in “Hokkaido chu hiza kurige!” Which I’m told is an old and still very popular program up here. Being shown on NHK on November 9th. NHK pretty much being the equivalent of the BBC. The director of the show, Satoshi Takashima, came down from Sapporo to speak to us before the filming started, mainly to give us a run down of what was going to happen. The scene by scene description of the show he gave us had me in histerics at times, partly due to the translations they had come up with, partly due to the story line.  Scene 1 “The Encounter” being one of my favourites. The story line goes as so….

The plucky presenter had come down to Toya to watch autumn in all its splendor, on the bus on the way in, he spies two young gaijin playing with the Nursery school kids on the beach. At which point he feels the overwhelming desire to come talk to us, to hear our story. We of course get on like gravy and yorkshire pudding and soon invite him back to our humble abode. He spies a beaten up old file on the bookshelf, which we inform him contains letters from all the previous volunteers. He has a paw through and comes across a torn old map of the town. At which point in a very Blue Peter “here’s one we made earlier” style Craig and I inform him we are in the process of making a new map, and whip out our nicely drawn map of the roads in town, no landmarks on there yet however. So of we go to make the map together, meeting many an interesting person along the way, all of whom had an interesting story or two to say about the volunteers pat and present. (The last part being the only nonscipted part to the show)

The crew filmed us around the house, cleaning, playing Xbox, eating, anything really. They did some filming of us playing with the nursery kids, on the beach, wandering around town in the rain, down at the Mizu no Eki, doing the Adult conversation class. The latter being quite disruptive, its really hard to concentrate and not look at the camera when its only a foot away from your face and you’re trying to write on the board. There were lots of interviews, quite difficult interviews actually, they asked some quite pressing questions, things I hadn’t really thought about myself before.

Overall, as tiring as it was, quite enjoyed the whole filming process. Some very funny moments, one of the best one being when we being filmed eating Udon noodles, they egged me on the slurp them up (as you as supposed to in Japan), so I obliged, flicked myself in the eye with the noodle, and splattered myself and Craig with soup. All caught in High Definition. Brilliant. I’m really interested to see what the edited version is like, hopefully they cut out the worse parts. But I’ll have to wait until the air date to find out. They’re sending me a DVD of it, so I’ll put it up on Youtube or something so anyone who wants to can watch. Though of course it’ll be in Japanese. And finally for this post. With this update in mind I managed to snap a few picts whilst they were filming.  Rest of them in  the photography section.

Sunday 14th October - Completely on a random whim Yumi decided to whisk us away from Toya in her sparklingly clean car over to Niseko. Niseko is the prime Ski resort in Japan famed for its ample powder snow. And from what I’ve been told very popular with Australians, whether you view that as a good or a bad thing is up to you. However, a Ski resort without any Snow is an entirely different thing. It took about an hour from Toya to Niseko, including a brief stop at quite possibly the smallest bakery I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t resist the allure of a cheese covered freshly baked bun so I had my 2nd lunch for the day (I had earlier been to the bakery at the Mizu no Eki and eaten my fill). We got to the main tourist area at Niseko and met up with Haruka before treating myself to the 3rd lunch of the day, a Niseko Dog.

I didn’t really know what you were supposed to do at a Ski resort with no snow, we weren’t exactly prepared for white water rafting or any other particularly extreme activity. Yumi seemingly had a plan however, we drove up to the primary Ski lift and started climbing the mountain! We didn’t get too far, its steep and muddy. We did however have a fun photo sessions doing something I’ve always wanted to, climbing up onto the now stationary chair lifts and the pylons holding them up. There was lots of poses from Craig and I, lots of cries of “Baka Gaijin!” from Yumi and Haruka, and lots of photos.

So after all that excitement it was off to the Cafe to try custard filled rolls, which were pretty damn good. Some more fooling around, a trip to 7/11 to buy some Gundam figurines, and finally we ended up at Huruka’s house, where her cat practiced its boxing moves on Craig and I. Damn funny to watch. A little while later we had to head back, listening to “hanbato hanbato” all the way whilst Yumi swerved all over the road in so she could clap to the beat. There is of course a photo album for the day in the photography section!

Friday October 13th - Unfortunately Craig beat me to the punch with writing this post, so he managed to snag what I believe to be the perfect post title for today - A Mini Adventure. So where to begin. Craig and I had just finished our first day at the Hospital (an update on which will come once I’ve been a couple more times), the sun was shining, we both had our cameras, and we were already part way up the hill, so we thought, “why not climb to the top?”

The question was which top we were supposed to climb to, since there are a lot of hills around here. We eventually settled on walking up the road for a bit until we saw one that looked scaleable. After cutting through a farm to get to the base of the hill we started our ascent, clambering up a bank and straight into the bamboo. And then for 95% of the hour and a bit it took to get to the top in the bamboo we remained. It was damn hard work trying to force my way through the undergrowth forcing me to take off my jumper which had previously been protecting my arms and wrists. So by the time we reached the top my wrists were covered in scratches and bleeding in a few places. When I say force my way through I mean it in quite a literal sense. Despite looking pretty easy to get through, after a few feet you end up completely tangled up and literally need to drag yourself up and through using anything you can grab onto. I got a bit hasty a few times and tried to power through, only to end up on the floor.

Finally the summit is reached! Like something out of a movie we reached the top and were greeted by the sun bursting through the leaves onto us. It somehow seemed really suitable after all our effort. The main motivation for what most people would consider a stupid idea was to get the best photo’s we could, so up a tree I went, getting impressively high I might add. The views, as we had hoped were incredible, couldn’t have asked for better!

The day was however, not yet over. We hadn’t really thought of how we were going to get back home. I didn’t really fancy walking back down the hill in the dark, not to mention is was pretty damn cold by this point. The decision was made to head for the Ice Cream farm, then call Yumi for a lift. We never reached the farm. I was distracted by the prospect of buying some jam from a small roadside farmshop. They didn’t have any jam (that sounded particularly appetising), but the owner did take pity on us and gave us a cup of coffee on the house, which is always nice. The sole other occupant of this little shop was the farmer delivering his produce, who quite surprisingly spoke really good English. So we had a good little chat with him, finding out he used to be a mechanic in the Japanese airforce, but had since retired to Hokkaido to become a farmer/Ski instructor. He was a really friendly guy, who persuaded us to try something to eat whilst we were here. And I’m so glad he did, had a big bowl of Kare-soba. Soba noodles covered in curry, which is now very close to being the best thing I’ve tried in Japan.

So now to get home. No problem, I’ll just call….No battery. Bollucks. It took me a few minutes until I accepted the fact we were going to have to walk home in the cold and dark. So we started off walking down the highway after a brief stop to have a look at the little hut selling porn…The Japanese seem to very open about sex. A few minutes along the road an idea began to brew…Having recently read “Highway to Hokkaido”, a book which follows the journey of an English teacher hitchhiking up through Japan, we were inspired to try our luck. And lucky we were! Within five minutes a pair of Gaijin from Ireland and Scotland no less drove past and gave us a lift home. I have to say, despite it being only a 5 minute journey, I now love hitchhiking. Think I’m going to give it more of a go when I go travelling next year. Not sure how well it would have gone if a Japanese had picked us up, with my limited language skills. Sure I’ll find out next time! Loads more photos here, or via photography section.

Saturday October 13th - Much the same format as the week before, except a different route, this time around the North of the lake. Once again a bus took us up to the start point - a road amongst the farmland above Toya. Which was like standing in a wind tunnel, was freezing up there! Craig was finally back in action so he joined Team Sogo (my newly coined term for the regular walkers from work, myself, Hiromi and Omori-san)

Yet again it was a fantastic day for the walk, if a little cold. Since its now Autumn here the trees around Toya all all changing into fantastic shades of red and orange. Something I rarely payed much attention to when I was in Britain, seemingly its only when you live surrounded by forest and carry a camera with you all the time that you notice these things more. Craig and I were looking after the few kids who were on the walk. Haruca-chan for the walk, one of the girls from Irie Nursery in Abuta, and two of the boys from the elementary school, who lately have been a bit of a pain in the arse. Haruca made a habit of running along dragging me behind her in little bursts before she’d fall over again. And by halfway through I was giving her a piggyback the whole way, 7km or however long it was, seemingly was too far for her. Main reason for this post was to draw attention to some of the photos I took. Check the Photography section for the whole lot!  Album Link

Saturday 6th October - The title is pretty self explanatory, I went on a walk, with, wait for it, waterfalls. Once again I had been blessed with a fantastic day for it, and as I was feeling in a particularly photographic mood I borrowed Craig’s rather awesome camera for the morning, as he was still unable/not allowed to do strenuous physical activity

Bright and early at 9am I met Hiromi and Omori-san at the Sogo centre along with a fair few other people at the Sogo centre to get the bus up to the start point at the top of the mountian. Of course we’d only be walking down the mountain to see the waterfalls, what kind of fool walks up! Despite having seen this several times before, I was surprised to see that almost everyone taking part was on the northern side of 50yrs+ All of whom looked like they are prepared to trek through the wilderness, kitted out with walking sticks and hydration packs. Only so much I can say about the walk, it was a really nice day, very calming, beautiful scenery. Only upset was that in my desire to get a better photo I caused a minor landslide onto the unsuspecting pensioners below me, which cut some poor old mans leg quite badly. I felt pretty awful about it, seems he took it in his stride and forgave me thankfully. Either that or no-one ever found out it was me…

I adored having Craig’s camera for this. And very thankful for the 10x zoom, I genuinely considered getting a similiar “proper” camera, but I eventually decided against it. The convenience of being able to carry a camera with me at all times cannot be underestimated. Photo album for the day.

Thursday October 4th - Next day I arrived at the Sakura nursery ready to be mercilessly attacked by a barrage of lego, only to be told today was also picnic day! I could hardly believe my luck. We got a bus down to the same campsite as the day before. Before then picnic was the obligatory walk along the lakeside. Which from a photography point of view was fantastic, absolutely no wind that day, so I was blessed with some fantastic photo opportunities of the lake, even if I only had my phone to take advantage of them. The staff at Sakura nursery made a big effort to try and talk to me on the walk, its tough as they know literally no English, but with some dictionary use we managed to get a few sentences across to each other. On this walk I also discovered a new found love for climbing trees, which apart from being great fun impresses the kids no end. Not that I’m a show off or anything. Only problem is that the kids then try to copy me, which is obviously tough considering they are barely over 2ft high sometimes. Eventually we got to our picnic spot where we faced an onslaught of dragon flies much to the amusement of the kids. After eating it was playtime once again, tho only for a short while as the bus came to pick us up pretty quick.

Even armed with only my phone I managed to snap a fair few photos of the day. Due to time constraints I’m combining any photos from the same place in one album. So to see all the photos see the Sakura Nursery album for October. Although as usual I’m putting my favourites for the day below. Visit the photography page for the album!