JAPANEXILE

Although my first onsen was during my Noboribetsu weekend I thought onsen deserved an update of its own, its that important. For those that do not know japanese onsen is hotsprings by any other name, there are differences in the experience however. Onsen is a pretty big thing out in Japan, especially up here in Hokkaido where the largest venues are, and in fact entire towns are built solely for onsen. My first onsen experience was over in the aptly named Toya-onsen. I was a little nervous going in, no matter how you think of it, its a little weird stripping down and getting in a big bath with a large group of other men. Although now that I’ve been and done its taken on a “what was the big deal” status. There is a whole ritual to onsen, its not just the bath part. Once stripped down you go and sit down on a little stool in front of a shower and scrub yourself down for 10minutes or so, using the bucket in front of you, a little towel, and lots of soap. Once sparklingly clean you brave the near freezing temperatures outside and hop into the baths themselves. Once you get over the initial “Dear God this is unbearably hot” phase its very relaxing, the the contrast between the unbearable cold outside the bath and the unbearable heat inside is pretty nice. I’ve been to a couple nice onsen places now, and I’ve enjoyed it more each time. All I can say now is bring on the snow, as I think the onsen will become even nicer as a haven away from the cold.

Update: Having now been to Onsen whilst the snow is falling I can safely say there are few things more relaxing. Although slipping around on the ice covered path in the nude ain’t particularly fun. Not surprisingly not photos for this one. Think people might get the wrong idea if I went in with my camera.

Still on the first weekend in November, its taking far too long to get through just three says of events. Then again that Noboribetsu update was ridiculously long. 1174 words. Fortunately this one shouldn’t be quite so bad. Now, to explain the post title - on Sunday we climbed up Usuzan, your friendly neighbourhood active volcano. And by climbed I mean we took the cable car up to the top then walked 100m to the viewpoint. Once again cursing to myself because of my lack of camera I was forced to take in the views using my eyes instead of a viewscreen. And incredible the views are, its possible to look out across in the pacific, all the way down the south coast of Hokkaido, then from the other viewpoint out over Lake Toya. A perfect opportunity for making panoramas, which I will of course post up, as no words can do the views justice, neither can pictures to be honest, but its something.

There is a whole entertainment complex built around the base station of Mt Uzu. Including a bear zoo, which was our next stop. I’ve never been to a zoo, and now that I’ve been to this one, I don’t think I want to again. I’m not normally the animal rights type, and I guess I’m still not, but the way in which the bears at this zoo are treated seems completely deplorable. Their “habitat” was nothing more than a concrete bunker, and with 8 or so full grown bears in a single bunker its not even a roomy bunker. All the bears do is sit there and eat biscuits thrown at them by visitors. It just seemed so unfitting for such an amazing animal. Even worse that there was well over 40 bears in total. I don’t think a place like this would even be legal in the UK, I really hope not. And I really hope this isn’t the norm in Japan. That pretty much put a massive damper on the rest of the day, curry ramen couldn’t even lift my spirits. Photo Album

3rd November - This update has been a long time coming. I’ve been really bus as of late so just haven’t had the physical strength to move my wrists enough to type. But right now I’m feeling strong enough to break a toothpick, so thought it was a good time to do some writing. This will likely be a long post, in fact I’m going to have to split it into two parts, yet I still think I’m not going to be able to write as much as I wanted, jikan janai! (No Time)

Noboribetsu (a town I have incorrectly been calling Noroibetsu up until now) is Hokkaido’s largest and most famous hotspring resort. Yet quite surprisingly (I was surprised anyway) I didn’t get chance to go the Hotsprings there. No, our reason for visiting was a cultural and historical one. Following the advice of Neo (aka Shiro) our first stop was the relatively recently constructed mock Edo Period town, the name of which escapes me. Since it it nearing the end of the season it was pretty much a ghost Edo Period town, which in some ways is better as it means no queues and we can get special treatment for being exotic gaijin. The town is amazingly well done, looks incredibly realistic, so many good photo opportunities…which of course I was unable to take advantage of due to forgetting the battery to my camera. A fact I was cursing the entire weekend. Anyway, first on the activity list…

Ninja Show! Sit in a darkened room, and well, its a ninja show. Actors/Ninjas jump around the stage fighting to fast paced music. Although most of the action happens on the stage up front there is a gangway through the crowd which ninjas pop out of every now and again, as well as appearing from the darkness above for the extra shock value. The show lasted about 15mins, the first 5 being the training and ‘graduation’ of this new ninja. The rest following said Ninja on his first mission. The whole thing was so well choreographed, definitely something I would go to see again, and in fact it has made the shortlist of things I want to show my family when they come out here at Christmas. I wish it had been possible to get some photos or videos of it in action, best thing we was us posing at the end of the show with the actors, although rather embarrassingly I did the Ninja sign wrong, so I pretty much ruined what would have been an great photo. This town is definitely all about Ninjas tho, and other than the Ninja show the best attraction is the Ninja house. Historically Ninja houses are designed to be very difficult to attack/move through once inside. This one being no exception, featuring mazes, swinging boulders, fake doors, darkness, etc. Most importantly and interestingly for us were the sloping floors, which are really good for doing silly poses on, making it look like gravity no longer applies to you. So after all that excitement we wandered up to the Samurai museum to have a look and read about sword making and samurai in general, a line I particularly liked from the Spirit of the Samurai text talking about a teacher and a famous samurai, I cleaned up the translation a bit as the one the museum had used didn’t really make sense. “These two men had nothing in common with each other, except, perhaps…the Spirit of the Samurai”

Back out in the street a strangely dressed woman and her rather creepy looking friend ushered us inside to watch their performance. It was a show about upper class geishas, we had the opportunity to act in it but were unfortunately beaten out of the chance in a heated “Rock Paper Scissors” match with an elderly Korean man. Despite that blow the show was still pretty cool, despite understanding very little, the costumes were amazing, and Japanese humour from what I’ve seen to far is very much slap stick in nature, so you can generally the gag.

Shiro insisted we had a go at pretty much every game whilst we were in town, be it Japanese archery or Shiruken star throwing. I wasn’t too bad at the Shiruken throwing, at least I hit the target. The archery…well I’m going to blame the equipment. Give me a real bow and I’m sure I would have risen to the occasion. My real talent was in the ‘poison dart through a pipe’ game, which after spending 1000Yen on I managed to hit the centre target, and won…a 500Yen voucher, redeemable only at the other game stores. What a pointless prize. I was cheesed off, especially after Craig’s unbelievable luck earlier in the day. For a thousand Yen a go you turn the handle of a large box, a coloured ball pops out, the colour you get determines what prize you get. I won some bouncy balls. Craig won a f***in sword. Worth 9000Yen. First the camera and then that, not my lucky day for sure. I ended up buying a sword anyway, which was a lot of fun at the time and for a few days after, charging down the samurai guard at the town gate was particularly funny. It hasn’t seen much action since then however, perhaps when I’ve had a few kendo lessons Craig and I can up the stakes by using metal swords. Its definitely a good souvenir whatever, I’d like to get it engraved with my name in Kanji if I can as well, though Neo seemed to think that wouldn’t be possible. Not sure why.

Changing the theme of the day completely we then headed over the the castle. Yes castle, not in the style you’d expect tho. It is in fact a near life size replica of some castle in Denmark, in honour of some trade agreement from the past. As quite suitably there is an aquarium inside. I do like aquariums, although I’ve now been to quite a few, and a lot of fish look pretty damn similar to me. Still, this one had some stuff I hadn’t seen, a massive Octopus in a pool far too small for it, and lots of touch pools. Which are always nice…sting rays are so soft its unbelievable. Peculiarly there was also a lizard section which made a nice change of pace. After having a look at some thoroughly depressed looking penguins (I couldn’t help but think of that movie “Happy Feet”) it was on to the dolphin show! Easily the highlight was where I was able to go up to the platform and control the dolphins using the commands the handlers taught me. Why more places don’t allow you to do that I don’t know, even more confusing was why no-one else from the audience apart from Craig volunteered, don’t the Japanese like controlling dolphins? Part 2 (and potentially 3) coming up soon. Until then, a ridiculous amount of photos that Craig and Shiro took available here. (I’ve actually written the other parts already, but I’m going to release them throughout the week to make it look like I update more regularly)

Going completely against the chronological order of events here is an update on today’s happenings! By far the single most important thing, and in fact the only thing I am going to talk about it, is that today was the first day of snow of the year in Toya! Yata! Like a child on Christmas morning I woke and opened my curtains to see the snow falling all around. After waking Craig to give him the big news, we bundled up and went to work at the Nursery. Work was as usual, apart from many of the kids started crying when we went for our walk due to the cold - poor things. The snow got heavier as the day went on, and we watched eagerly, hoping it would stick and Toya would be transformed into a Winter Wonderland.

As so it was! After we finished at the Sogo centre we went outside to indulge the inner child in a brief snowball fight, in which we were rather randomly joined by Namiko. Now, cold and wet we went home to dress more suitably for the occasion. Donning full on Ski gear and Snow shows we headed back out to the little garden in front of the Sogo centre (the only place which has lighting) and started to make giant snowballs. And that’s where we stayed for th next hour or so, crawling around on our knees in the snow. By the end Craig’s was woefully inadequate next to mine - a point I mentioned a few times! After a quick skate along the black ice to the Tag for dinner we came back out to finish our work. Originally we had wanted to have a head high ball going, but somehow I think that would have taken us hours. Instead we erected a snowman outside the entrance to the Sogo centre. Its the prank of the century and no-one will ever know it was us!

2nd November - You may think its a little strange to be having a welcoming party now. Considering that we’ve been here for two months already! When these official events happen they need to find a day when EVERYONE can come. It was a rather distinguished guest list, most of our bosses from the board of education came (for part of the night anyway), along with many various friends and people we’ve never spoken to from work. The party itself was being held in a rather well hidden small Karaoke Bar above a shop in Abuta, we had been to collect the food from somewhere else with Kenzo (aka Karaoke King), which was nicely laid out in the bar along with multiple pitchers of beer when we arrived (late I might add, there was a problem with the door at work that inexplicably couldn’t wait until the morning to be fixed). After the obligatory speeches from various people, Craig and I included, the party began!

You hear stories and read about how different the Japanese become once the booze start flowing. I had never really believed it tho, until tonight. The change in their personalities and behaviour was truly astonishing. The Japanese have quite a healthy attitude toward drink in general. It doesn’t matter what you do on a night out when under the influence, no-one talks about it the next day. Personally I wish people had the same attitude elsewhere in the world. Within about an hour of the party starting in earnest Hiromi’s husband was passed out sprawled across the sofa. No-one bats an eyelid, apparently he’s always like this. Kenzo was sitting opposite us (when he wasn’t helping himself to beer from behind the bar) entertaining me with his speed eating ability, there were hands and chopsticks everywhere! After the food the infamous and aptly named Karaoke King showed his skills, his opening performance setting the tone for the rest of the night, he was amazing. He came out wearing a glittery dress and a wig belting out some Japanese Rock/Pop song. Kenzo can do the Japanese male pop voice perfectly, and he’s quite a showman to boot, regularly changing his costume and getting the crowd involved. Suzuki-san was the other biggest surprise star of the night, he’s a big fan of Karaoke for sure! Quite literally anytime the mic wasn’t being used by someone else it was one of those two filling the silence. After an hour or so the higher ups left the party, not sure if that’s the normal practice here, but it was probably for the better. I might have felt a little ashamed the next day if they had seen some of the things I ended up doing… The beer flowed non stop all night to the point where we were all rather drunk. Craig, Cori and I belting out song after song arm in arm with Kenzo, only stopping for some shameless flirting with some of the nurses from the hospital who were in the same bar. About 1am a few of us headed out to a ramen shop for a well earned snack. I now think ramen is easily the greatest food to have after a night out. All partied out Craig had a kip on the floor, along with Kenzo and some other guy from work.

Watching the behaviour of everyone change so much was so funny I can’t even describe it. I was hoarse with laughter. I cannot wait to go out with some of those guys again! Photo Album

Halloween isn’t normally celebrated out in Japan, its more of a Western thing, however there are still some shops that devote a little bit of shelf space to it. Anyway, its pretty much part of mine and Craig’s jobs to plan the yearly Halloween party in Toya. I don’t think I’ve actually celebrated Halloween for quite a few years, and when I did it was Dad who carved the pumpkin and thought up the games. So when it came down to it, despite the expectations of people over here, I know about as much about Halloween as they do. I sure as hell don’t know why we celebrate Halloween, thankfully no-one asked me. Although I think when I’ve finished writing this I might find out…maybe.

We had done the shopping for the party up in Sapporo, or at least we had bought the prizes for the costume contest, along with our costumes. I didn’t really know what the format of the party was going to be either, who was supplying the food etc. So we concentrated on having enough games to keep people entertained. I spent the best part of the afternoon making a giant pumpkin out of black and orange paper for the ‘pin the nose of the pumpkin’ game. Craig was keeping his ideas for the party games inexplicably quiet. But he was confident we had enough to do and everything would be fine, so, tired as I was, I believed him and went to Badminton.

Back from Badminton quickly to try my hand at carving my pumpkin, my trusty leatherman made easy work of it. Despite Craig’s protests I decided to follow a design I had seen on the internet, why reinvent the wheel? We started the party off with my game ‘pin the nose on the pumpkin’ which turned out to be ridiculously easy as everyone had a good grope before finally pinning the thing down. So we relegated my beautiful pumpkin to mere decoration, and drew a pumpkin on the white board instead. Which worked better, even if it was less aesthetically pleasing. After all that excitement we took an extended break to dig into the feast the various members of the Adult class had provided, all Japanese food, nothing remotely Halloween related. Not even a pumpkin pie, not a single sweet. Sorely disappointed!

The games continued for the next hour, first the Spider Web game, where you stand in a circle and wrap each other in string until you are completely entangled, then try to escape. which everyone managed except one kid who managed to get himself so tangled we had to cut the string off him. Secondy we went for apple bobbing, splitting the motley crew into two teams, the team who empties the bowl first obviously being the winner. Teams A (My team) destroyed the competition, mainly due to the reluctance of some of the opposition to getting their hair wet. Another apple game was next, passing it down the line only using your chin. I thought this was really easy, everyone else seemed to struggle, perhaps I have a bigger chin. It didn’t really matter in the end, most people were in histerics watching the desperate attempts to pass the apple along. My self included, only stopping so I could catch as many of them on film as possible. The final game of the evening was the mummy game, simply, mummify someone in toilet roll. Cori and I paired up with the intention of showing them how things are down, only instead Cori’s attempt at mummifying me was embarrassing. Seriously, my bra was showing through (a statement which probably needs explaining) The party was finished off by Craig, Cori and I choosing the winners of the costume contest. In 3rd place, Pirate Setsuko, 2nd place, Little Red Riding Hood Hatsumi, and in 1st place Scream! Its Namiko! Be sure to check out the photo album, things will make far more sense!