JAPANEXILE

On two consequetive gloriously sunny days at the beginning of October I was lucky enough to be working at the Toya and Sakura nurseries respectively. Craig was unfortunately still incapacitated with the ol’ mocho so he missed on on what were two brilliant days!
So up first was the Toya Nursery day. On my schedule the day had been written as a “Nursery Hike” so I was fully clad in walking boots and windproof trousers ready for action. The hike turned out to only be from the nursery toward to one of the larger campsites on the edge of lake Toya. Which is all path and only takes 15mins normally. Although with the long train of mother’s and prams it took rather longer in fact. Taiki was for one reason or another absent so I was left to figure out what was going on and what I was supposed to do by myself.

We set up camp underneath a large oak tree, I don’t think you could choose a better picnic spot actually. Nice view, space, shade, and sun if you wanted it, Perfect! It was quite interesting watching how differently the kids behave when their parents are with them. So much more shy, and they seemed to cry so much more, was a bit strange. Not everyone had a parent with them however. In particular Yui and Rinkou, two of my favourite kids, and so I was assigned to them for the parent child events for the day.

First up was pretty simple, kids and parents split into two teams. Parent and child then run along together a short distance, grab a ribbon, and tie it on to then end of the ribbon placed by the previous pair, first team who’s ribbon reaches the start line wins! I don’t actually remember who won, perhaps it was one of those “Well everyone is a winner” things - which I generally dislike. Next was the main event, sticker collecting (which I didn’t realise at first) so I didn’t quite know what was going on. Rinkou and Yui both sprinted off dragging my confused self behind them. We ran around in circles for a bit as Yui and Rinkou couldn’t decide which way to go. The dispute was settled with a game of Janken (Japanese Rock Paper Scissors) and so we ran with Rinkou to the nearest teacher. I finally realised why we were running around, game was to go to each teacher, who asked you to do a little task, which when completed would get the kids a sticker. The tasks when pretty fun, things like skipping together (harder than you think), popping balloons by sitting on them. The latter of which was so funny to watch, as neither of my girls could do it and just bounced off each time! After collecting five stickers we ran back to the start for the finish…or so I had hoped. Rinkou had forgotten to get her stickers so I had to run around all of them again to find out which one she hadn’t got. Good exercise I guess.

Rest of the day was spent playing around as usual, large scale Ninja fights, collecting conkers, tom the human climbing frame, that sort of thing. Even more fun than usual as we had more room to run about. Namiko had packed me quite possibly the greatest packed lunch ever as well, which just sweetened the deal on an already awesome day. Only downer had to be that my camera inexplicably stopped working, so I was near photo less for the day! Fear not however, I manged to take a couple before it died!

And anything else that has occurred to me during my first month here!

Its hard to sum up my feelings on Toya, Japan, and my new life out here without sounding like a gushing teenager. As I am writing this I’m amazed that I’ve been here over a month now, the old phrase that time flies when you’re having fun holds true. I love living here, I love my life here, and I love Toya. When I first arrived I’ll be honest, I wasn’t overwhelmed with joy. Toya is small and quiet and immediately I was wishing I was in Tokyo. But as more time goes on I fall more in love with this place and its people. The town has an amazing community spirit to it which I’ve been sucked into. Like so many things the people you meet are what define the time you have, and the people here couldn’t be better. Friendly is an understatement, most will go so far out of their way to help you in anything you need I feel bad even mentioning any problem I might have, for fear of their reaction! The Board of Education here have been receiving volunteers for a long time, and they’ve learnt how to make sure we enjoy ourselves. Ensuring we’re kept busy with a varied work schedule. Its a truly wonderful feeling to be able to look forward to going to work each day. The days are tiring, and getting longer, but I don’t begrudge any of it. There are times when it gets a little boring, but that is bound to happen. And I’m learning to make the most of that down time, updating my blog as I am right now, or doing a bit of Japanese. I could keep going on about Toya, but it would get a little repetitive.

And now onto the other things that have come to mind since I’ve been here.

Language. I haven’t done anywhere near enough studying yet. I came wanting to leave as near fluent as possible, and that is still my goal. But something is going to have to change for that goal to be achieved. At least I have realised this at this stage instead of later. I’m finding myself involved in Clubs most evenings now so time is limited, and when I’ve been at work all day, no matter how fun it may have been, the last thing I want to do is sit down and open a book. Despite very few people in the town speaking English, one could probably get by here without knowing much Japanese, the little I have currently is enough to communicate enough to understand work and my other responsibilities. But there have been countless times when all I want to do is have a conversation with someone I have met, or understand but one thing the kids say to me, but I can’t. Its very frustrating.

Mobile Phones. It has really surprised me to find that pretty much all Japanese phones are massive compared to Western standards. Yes they do everything, TV is a standard feature, as is an enormous screen and pretty much everything else. But still, I expected a slightly more elegant devices. Another thing which seems inexplicable to me is the way people attach various trinkets and cuddly toys to their phone, making an already large phone all but impossible to put in a pocket.

Food. In general the food here is fantastic. Especially BBQ. Japanese style BBQ is SO much better than in England, great fun with everyone cooking and eating straight off the grill. Rice is brilliant, whatever meal of the day. Its great to fill you up when you can’t be bothered to make a full meal. Plenty of stuff I don’t like however, although I don’t know what half of it was. unagi - eel. Is horrendous, like eating a sponge infused with soap. Why anyone would eat it I don’t know. Same goes for Octopus, one night in he GutenTag our boss offered both of us a piece. Of course we accepted. I chewed for 5 minutes before attempting to swallow, I gagged, then gave up and discretely spat it out. Craig soldiered on and managed to swallow it. And finally on my list of foods I hate, nori - seaweed. Its appears in far too many meals and manages to consequently ruin far too many meals! I would really like Onigiri if it wasn’t wrapped in seaweed. We get our food from the only places possible in Toya, Seicomart and Acoop. They manage to fulfill our food needs well enough. However, whenever I get the chance to go to a Supermarket I can’t help but really wish we had one in Toya. I really want to be able to buy more fruit but unfortunately its prohibitavely expensive unless you find a decent local farmer of go to the Supermarket. Convenience stores charge nearly £1 each!

I did have more to say in this post but unfortunately I can’t fully remember what that was. Next month maybe.

My first of experience of Yosakoi was after the 2 Day March back in September. The town team performed whilst we were all enjoying our post walk BBQ and I was aw-struck. Yosakoi is Japanese traditional dancing set to modern fast music. Its quite a new thing, originally starting in the city of Koichi in 1954, however it is now very widespread across Japan. Towns and Cities small and large hold competitions, the most famous of which taking place in in Tokyo, Sapporo and Nagasaki. Our town team has roughly 20 people in it, but this can be any number up to 150. Team members can be any age, often all dancing together. The Toya town team has children as young as five dancing alongside women in their sixties. Who despite their age are surprisingly nimble.

The video below is one Nate made last year of the Toya dance team the Sapporo competition. The teams parade through the town and do several performances in front of the crowds. The Toya team left with an honourable mention. Which is a big deal as far as I can gather. I’ll be doing this next year with any luck!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRl697fObb4]

With the success Nate had last year with the team we were invited farely swiftly to join. It is of course optional, I’ve never been much of a dancer, but it really hard to refuse invites here, and there wasn’t any real reason to, I had the time, and wanted to give it a try whatever. Craig and I are immediately at a slight disadvantage with the whole language barrier, but copying other people can get you a long way so its not too bad. From what I can tell judging by their ability every other member of the team has been learning the dances for a while! There are 4 different ones that seems to happen regularly. But only one is the ‘performance piece’ which was introduced to me last week, around the same time I was told I would be performing in Abuta on October 27th. Which is far too soon.

No point sugar coating it, Yosakoi is hard. And I’m not very good, perhaps its a practice issue, I hope its a practice issue. Because I’m going to feel very foolish if I forget othe moves during the performance at the end of the month. The moves themselves look quite simple when demonstrated, but you need to be precise with them, arms must be at a certain angle, hands must be pointing a certain direction. And time must be kept at all times! Get out of beat and you stick out like a sore thumb. The main issue I’m finding is remembering all of the moves at once. And the pace with the music is far faster than during practice. So that’s two (quite significant) issues. I still have some time, practice is 7pm - 9pm every Tuesday and Friday. We’ve also been given a training video to watch whilst we are at home, although space is an issue when you have a kitchen and living crammed into a small house together.

The past couple of sessions one of the leading ladies Murakami-san has taken Craig and I to a separate room to practice. Which has been a massive help. I’m feeling a lot more  confident now, today was a really good session. Murakami is particularly keen for us to perform in Abuta at the end of the month and she has placed a lot of faith in us to learn it in time.

I enjoy Yosakoi, I do, really. When you get stuff right its very satisfying, and I’m rather excited at the prospect of the competitions next year. I’m just a little worried I’m going to let the team down. As I doubt any of them would be honest with me and tell me that I’m not ready!

Date is the nearest major town to Toya, about 20minutes drive South down the coast from Abuta, with a population of about 40,000. Its the first stop when any shopping is needing to be done, or meals need to be eaten. It has all the amenities, Karaoke, Ramen, Cinema etc, and about as much charm to it as a paper bag. Seriously I don’t know what the city planners were thinking when they were establishing towns up here, every major town I have been to so far looks like a deserted industrial estate. They’re all laid out in the traditional American style grid, so the car is needed to go anywhere, and they just feel, for a lack of a better word, unfriendly. Like many things tho, its the people you go with that make the place. And Shiro is always good fun. Muroran is larger again, and further down the coast again. Its best feature would have to be the “Swan Bridge” you must cross to get to it, its quite a sight spanning over Volcano Bay. It has much the same feel to it as Date, but at least the shops are considerably larger here so it redeems itself a bit.

Our first major trip to the pair of cities was on 23rd September with Shiro and his wife. Primary aim of the trip was to get to UniQlo, the equivalent of Primark in UK. (Not that I knew what Primark was until Craig told me) All honesty its a great shop (UniQlo - no idea about Primark) Good Clothes and Good Prices! Shopping as ever was painfully boring so thats all I’ll say about it. Most important purchase of the day was of course the Xbox360. We got the Core Pack with 2 Games from the princely sum of 27000Yen. Which is damn good. Only problem with the games is that one of them is in Japanese. Good Practice I guess. We of course did a little sightseeing during our trip, went to visit a Sword Museum, observed a sword being made for 10minutes or so. Wasn’t too exciting when you can’t understand the commentary or don’t really know the history well behind it all.

Like most days here the highlight was Dinner! Korean BBQ being the choice tonight! Had to wait half an hour for a table but my god is it worth it. Quite simply the single greatest meal ever. Each table has in the centre of a a bucket with some coals in, you order all the meat, and cook yourself, eating straight off the BBQ. We ate a pretty frightening amount. Shiro just keeps piling on the dishes. I felt ill afterwards and it was totally worth it.

Our only other trip to Muroran was with Hiromi camera and bag shopping. Which as ever is unexciting to write about. So I’ll write about the Game Centre we went to instead. Just as they are in Tokyo, Game Centres out here are so much fun. Its quite a legitimate thing for people of any age to spend the evening in the Arcade. Which I think is great. Spent most of time time on this pistol dueling game, mainly because I kept winning. Before we left all three of us fell into the trap of trying those machines were you put money in in the hope that it knocks more money off the shelf. Although in this case the money was actually Aero bars. Spent about 2000Yen between us - managed to win a fair few chocolate bars, even if it would have been cheaper to just buy them at the Supermarket, there was definitely a sense of accomplishment at the end.

I’m hoping one day to have more than a couple of hours to have a decent look around Date and Muroran, there must be something I’m missing to them. I can’t believe a town can look and feel so lifeless and yet still prosper.

September 25th - shortly after returning from the Sakura nursery Craig was feeling pretty damn rotten, as he had been for the past 12 hours or so. Originally we had put this down to the henious overeating over the weekend, and coincidentally I wasn’t feeling too hot either so it made sense. However, very correctly, Craig diagnosed himself with a problem with his appendix whilst sitting on the toilet no less. And so off to the Hospital he went for a blood test to confirm this.

3 hours later. Craig returns with a confirmed case of an acute appendicitis. This time I volunteer to come along with him to Kyokai Hospital in Abuta for his likely surgery to remove the enflamed appendix. And so then for the next several hours we play the waiting game. Which as you may expect isn’t particularly fun, especially if you are Craig and in quite considerable pain. It seemed inexplicable why we had to wait considering the Hospital was empty as far as I could tell, not nearly as busy and dramatic as TV had taught me. Luckily I was able to pass the time by attempting to document the adventure through photography. Eventually after 2 hours of waiting Craig goes in for his surgery, whilst Yuko, myself and Mr Omougiri go out for a curry burger to pass the time - leaving Karaoke King to watch the fort outside the operating theatre.

9.40pm. The doctor finally comes out and walks us through the procedure he has just performed. Apparently the enflamed appendix was impressively large, the largest he had had to remove infact, so suitably impressed I continued my photo diary of the night and asked to take a picture, internal organs are always a good thing to have a picture of for the scrap book. We saw Craig briefly after the surgery and had a few final photos before leaving him to sleep (or try to)

The recovery - I ended up visiting Craig each day in the Hospital, fitting it around my busy work schedule (Ha!) From what he told me it was extremely difficult to sleep for the fist few days due to the pain. Even so he seemed to be of fairly high spirits. Must have been the effect of the suppository pills he had to administer to himself! HA! He must have set a record for the number of visitors a day however, as almost everyone from the Board of Education came to visit, not to mention many many people from Toya. All of who came bearing gifts Craig had neither the desire nor ability to eat at first, so by the end of the week quite a substantial collection of snack foods had amassed.

So, any effect on me? Well work was slightly tougher without Craig to back me up, its a big confidence boost when there is at least one other person who understands what you are saying. But I managed, same for the living on my own. Although then again I’m used to spending time at home alone. Craig came home on Wednesday morning (October 2nd) but has yet to rejoin the workforce. So I’m still working solo for the moment. Other than that its business as usual once again!

23rd September - Our Saturday morning was to be spent being the token white guys at the Biennial Toya Sculpture Festival. Being a biennial event the Board Staff had quite frequently been saying how lucky we were. Normally this would be quite a truthful thing to say, but in all honesty, I’m not much of an art fan.

The event was being held at the Sogo Centre, the day before we had been helping transform the lobby into a lobby with some sofas and artwork, although somehow I hadn’t noticed the actual sculpture exhibition room, the entrance to which was cunningly hidden behind a desk. I’ll admit some of the sculptures were quite impressive. And even more impressively in my opinion was that many of the sculptures were from pretty far afield, with the winner coming from Iran. Our main job for the day was mainly to be the token Gaijin. Serving drinks to the mayor, the prize winners, and other important people who had been invited for the opening ceremony.

The art viewing only lasted for 30minutes, and the rest of the day was then spent lunching and drinking in the sun, with a little Tea Ceremony and traditional Japanese festival activities thrown in for good measure. Craig and I tried our hand at both rice cake making and the tea ceremony. The latter being overly complicated and the former a lot of fun! Any way, little else to say, photos can speak a thousand words.