JAPANEXILE

Although this was actually on February 3rd still think it deserves a post. Yukigassen meaning Snow ball fight of course. I had no idea this sport even existed before I came here, but apparently its quite popular in countries with large amounts of snow. We entered a Toya team in the Hokkaido Regionals of one of the largest tournaments on the Yukigassen circuit – Showashinza. Our A-Team consisted of myself, Craig, Taiki (nursery teacher), Kenzo (Karaoke King), Suzuki, Hiro (Yumi’s husband), Ronna, and Yasuko, who work at the hospital and are in the beginners English class.

A explanation of this sport is no doubt needed, so here goes. The court as about the same width as a Tennis court but about 1.5x the length. On the court are several 1metre high 1ft thick, and 1 or 2 metre wide barriers of hardened snow. The opposite sides of the court mirror each other and the teams must fight over the central barrier. Near the back of each side is the team flag, if a member of the opposing team touches your flag, its game over. You make the snowballs using a “machine” before each match. They are perfectly spherical, hard, and slightly smaller than a Tennis ball. They can been thrown straight and hard with relative ease when compared to a normal hand made snowball. A match consists of three games, each 3 minutes long. For each game each side gets 270 balls. There are 7 players on each side at the start. 3 forwards, and 4 backs. The forwards must stay forward but the backs can go where they want. The backs pass balls to the forwards by rolling them along the ground, you’re out if a team mate throws a ball to you. At the end of the 3 minutes, the team with the most people left in wins.

The actual games are nothing like the casual fun you have with your friends. The forwards, although the have the barriers to guard them from the front, must constantly dodge balls lobbed over the top, as well as attack, at which time they obviously expose themselves to attack as well.

Its quite a difficult game – for the unpracticed anyway. Our team had arranged one practice game – which Craig and I were unable to attend so it was our first time playing the game, against quite organised teams. (Think matching team jackets, sponsors etc) So, er, we lost, our three matches. Though we did win one game, which made all the difference to team moral afterwards I think. The whole day was fun, irregardless of the results, if I ever live in snowy country its something I’d do again for sure!

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.

So this would be nursery number three I now work at. At with a new nursery comes a whole load of new names. I was exhausted on arrival on my first day here, which didn’t help matters. Soon Honchiyou seems to be a much larger nursery than the others. The kids are split up into 5 groups of 12 or so kids, who each have their own separate room and teacher with them. I’m guessing Craig and I will be rotated round with each group. Guess which group I started in? Yup, number 1.

First on the activities list was…walking on strange platform shoes. Yeh. Wish I’d got a photo, but basically you just need to move your arms and legs in time and its very easy. Despite this I received a hearty round of applause once I had waddled around a bit. Next up, grape picking! I’m assuming we had permission to pick taking the fruit from this garden, otherwise we are all guilty of some serious fruit larsony, my job was mainly to get the high up branches, and then to hold the kids up and let them cut off little bunches. These grapes were soon to become our after lunch treat. I say treat but I’m actually not a big fan of the grapes out here, they taste rather bitter, and you’re expected to eat the pips along with the fruit. And after a lifetime of deliberately avoiding pips this is quite annoying.

After the excitement of fruit picking all of the groups went out for a walk, although you all take different routes, just to spice things up a bit. We climbed up the hill which overlooks Abuta toward a shrine. Had a great “Summer’s meadow” feel to it up there with the Sun coming in through the trees, reminded me a lot of England actually. We played a team game of dancing Rock Paper Scissors in front of a WW2 monument which I didn’t remotely understand, (the game and the monument) the kids soon clued in on this and always picked to play against me since it was a guaranteed win. I got on really well this this group of kids, one in particular was quite obsessive over me, always wanting to hold my hand. Which wouldn’t have been such a bad thing if he wasn’t playing with his crotch during the time he wasn’t holding my hand…

Photos are the only way to do the day justice. So without further adue. As usual I’ll post the best of my photos within the post, and the rest can be seen on the photography page. Click here for a link to the photo album for the day.