JAPANEXILE

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.

As usual I am not going to stick to any sort of chronological order. Its far quicker to group things together. So, Mike & Ben’s apartment, Junten, and Oji in general. The place is smaller than ours, but not by a particularly big margin, and there is obviously a good reason that it is small – its in the centre of Tokyo (sort of – its hard to decide what the centre of somewhere as massive as Tokyo is – its in a good spot whatever) The only real difference is that their kitchen and living room are two separate small rooms, whereas we have our larger combined kitchen/lounge. They don’t seem to use the living room at all, Mike’s bedroom is the place to be when entertaining of watching TV. The apartment is like many places in big cities however, rather noisy. The balcony overlooks a charmingly busy crossroad and the highway is pretty much the same height as their windows – so noisy. Especially if you compare to Toya, where your ears ring its so quiet at night (Yet I still wear earplugs…).

We spent only a brief morning in Junten and didn’t really get to see anywhere near as much as I wanted. We came in and talked for a while at one of the advanced ‘leaver’ classes. Named as such as it has people in it who have spent long periods in English speaking countries and have as such gained near fluency. This class was a lot of fun actually, they came up with some good interesting questions (What do you look for in a girl etc) so Craig and I could come up with some good answers as well. As Barney (The American who Mike & Ben teach with) so correctly put, Craig and I are not just teachers – we’re entertainers. In the next class we were there to help judge as English speaking contest, they all had to read out various famous English speeches from memory (if they could) whilst we judged on their pronunciation, memory and something else. It was mind numbingly boring and as I hadn’t had much sleep the night before I mainly stared drifting in and out of consciousness and gave pretty non precise marks. A terrible judge really. That was it really for our time at Junten. We saw where Mike & Ben work in the ELC (English Language Centre), met the headmaster, who gave us a nice hanging cloth calendar. We went to the local Indian for lunch with Mike, Ben, and the two English teachers – Barney is definitely an interesting guy, and quite different to how I expected him to be.

My thoughts on Junten - a nice school, with a very impressive main building. The schools we work in up here in Hokkaido are just worlds apart, same for our jobs really. Mike & Ben are very much ‘real’ teachers, having to clock in an out, working all day in the same place and are treated like teachers as far as I can tell. Their work just in general seems so much more serious than ours. Especially this year, we have had far less work (I’m not complaining), and everything is just so much more relaxed up here. Having so many jobs keeps things fresh and interesting. I wouldn’t change jobs, not for a second. I imagine they’d say the same though.

Oji. Most people think of Tokyo as being the same as any other large modern city – but its not really. Its made up of many, many, towns and cities that have grown into each other and as such each town still has its centre and own character to an extent. I can see why the Tokyo guys like Oji, its got everything you need really, nice restaurants, supermarket, arcade, karaoke – all within walking distance. And conveniently its only 30mins away by train from Shibuya and the ‘real’ centre of Tokyo. Despite being completely and totally different in nearly every way I can’t help myself but draw comparisons between Oji and Toya. I’ll admit slight jealousy at all the entertainment options available to them, and more significantly the chance to meet far more people – perhaps even people our own age! But there is always a downside – money just goes, so I doubt I’d be able to enjoy the options available to me like I would want to. The same for clubs and bars – which I am a big fan of, Japan however, has a drinking age of 20, unlike Sapporo however, they seem to ID in Tokyo. Hopefully I’ll find time to make more comparisons between our two projects, but for now, I’m happy to home in Toya.

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Nearly two months behind I actual start the Tokyo post, and it’ll probably be at least 2 weeks before I even finish with Tokyo if I don’t do something about my writing style. I am cursed by the inability to shorten my thoughts, and so have a tendency to give perhaps irrelevant details. Fortunately however  my thoughts on Tokyo haven’t changed much from  my first visit – although they have in some fundamental ways. But I shall leave them for the end of the story.

 So lets get started! Something that most certainly has to be mentioned was the journey down to Tokyo. Early January is the high season for flights from Sapporo down to Tokyo (but not coming back strangely) so we had the choice of paying 30,000Yen for a flight, or finding alternative transport. Trains were an option, and an interesting one at that, definitely be able to see a lot of interesting things, albeit only through a window at high speed.  Unfortunately the cost was prohibitive again, and the multiple changes and overnight trains left too much room for mistakes. That left the ferry from Tomakomai as the only option. Tomokomai itself is 90mins away at least – already longer than the flight. Getting there is no simple task without a car either. First a bus to Toya Onsen intending on catching a connecting bus to Abuta, which didn’t show up, so thankfully Shiro came to our rescue and gave us a lift to the station to catch the train in time. Once in Tomakomai we waited around for a bit before getting a Taxi to the ferry terminal and then boarded said ferry. It seemed pretty nice inside, and I was quite excited to see what our room was like. Imagine my surprise then we step in and there are 71 other people crammed into this room like sardines.

 Most of the ferry journey was spent trying to sleep restlessly on our bed of rocks. Some relief was given in a scorching hot Onsen onboard but it short lived. Thankfully the port came into sight about 11am the next day, although I was wondering where the Tokyo Metropolis had disappeared to. We were in Oarai – a 2 hour train ride away from Tokyo, probably should have researched the ferry route slightly better. Oarai didn’t even have a train station, and the bus to the town which did filled up before we got in. Not a good travelling day so far. We shelled out for a Taxi to the train station and thankfully got on the final leg of our journey without problem. Once again we went for the cheap option and were treated to an oven like local train which stopped at nearly every station.

 In total our journey to Tokyo took 29 hours. So I will finish this post with a phrase I am sure my parents have said to me before in some form “The cheaper option is not always better, its cheap for a damn good reason”  Never again, I’m flying next time.