Our Man in Hikami Nishi

Things are going pretty well at school. My school is really small (only 176 students) so I know pretty much all of them by face already, even if only about 10 by name. Also because it's a low level high school, theres not as much pressure to perform as there is at more academic schools, so I often drive home just after 4 and see my kids hanging around outside Family Mart (conbini - corner shop but so much better), which I personally think is much healthier than staying around for extra classes and clubs for 3 or 4 hours.

Lessons are impossible to predict. I've had intricately planned lessons be a bit of a mess, and then today, when given 5 mins to prepare a lesson for my worst JTE, an impromptu game of scattergories was one of my best lessons, as the kids got really into it, and team DISRESPECT came from behind to beat team NO FUTURES in the closing moments. (They love choosing cool team names and weirdly the less able kids come up with the most fun stuff.)

Last week had a bit of a nightmare: I'm often right on the cusp of being late, and on Friday I managed to scratch another teacher's car as I hastily grabbed the last spot in the car park. Cue a day of stress and annoying stuff as everybody whispered about it around the staffroom and I awkwardly wrote a letter in bad japanese apologising (well, good Japanese after my friend Dylan made it, well, less shit). Many bows were bowed that day. Turned out the scratch was easily fixed so nothing to worry about there, just the hassle it caused. To smooth it all over I bought a little sorry gift of chocolate almonds from starbucks so hopefully thatll be the end of that.

UPDATE: Kocho sensei (headteacher) just appeared in the staffroom and said I need to practice driving more, slapped me on the chest and said if it was his car I'd have to pay LOTS, laughed uproariously at this and then disappeared. Interesting.

Just now a group of 3rd year girls came into the staffroom. They came over and tried to say their practiced English sentence. It was 'Sometimes your breath は general'. I had no clue what this meant. Maybe I have bad breath? So they tried again. Then enlisted the help of my supervisor (after accusing him I THINK YOU TWO ARE FRIENDS). He got them to write it down, and it turned out to be 'i feel your breath'. WTF? The three girls and my supervisor stared expectantly at me. 'I... don't get it.' They looked upset. 'It is... we're so close I can feel your breath. Sometimes I love you, sometimes not,' said my supervisor. Er...... okay? 'A little inappropriate?' I suggested. Apparently not in Japanese as he explained to them how its a bit weird - but only in English. 'Thankyou!' and they traipsed out, leaving me a hand drawn picture of Disney's Stitch.

So school is fine. I'm so fucking behind on studying Japanese, I've entered myself for a test in a month today, and I don't even know a quarter of what I'm supposed to. Going to have to work my arse off - it's like Uni all over again. Except this time I will actually do the work. Definitely.

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The weekend was cool,went down to Kobe area Fri night and just relaxed, we tried to watch Howl's Moving Castle in Japanese (seen it a few times so probably can just about follow) but of course I fell asleep. Ate Omerice for the first time which is omelette and rice and is pretty underwhelming which makes me wonder why its half my school's favourite food. Picked up a stupidly expensive purple puffy jacket that cost a month's car rental but wanted it for ages. It's from Beams which seems to be like the Japanese version of Urban Outfitters, but way more popular and a little bit more upmarket. All about the collabos there, bought a porter × beams boy bag for a friend and my jacket's millet × beams. Went to Osaka Sat night for FREEDOM TIME again and of course patrick forge killed it.

Before we hit the club we popped into that same bar as before (9 seats 3 barstaff), love that place. James Woods movies on the screen that time and playing George Benson off of LP. Headed down, DJ Kawasaki on Especial Records first of all, loads of brazilian house which was wicked. Then P Forge came on, bit of broken funk but essentially was about the deep house, few tunes I recognised from back when I used to listen to his innervisions show, but its all about breaking you down and opening you up.

NOW THAT WE FOUND LOVE WHAT ARE WE GONNA DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

which is this but a deep deep house version with the vocals looped for time before the beat kicked in. And of course a version of Another Star (really subtle rerub of the original, just a more prominent kick and hat for a house feel) that seems to be a theme for this kinda night which I'm loving. And the 4hero version of John Coltrane's Naima that I still don't fully get but I'm getting there, into Phuturistix's Cohiba, which reminds me of doing radio at URN in Nottingham as my mate Max played that a couple years ago on a mix he did for the show and I was like WHAT IS THAT??!? And Reel People's Second Guess... all about the classics. As we left, they had a table of LPs on especial records, picked up Sleepwalker's "The Voyage"... I already have it on CD, it's only 5 of the tracks, and I don't have anything to play it on out here. Still though.

No pictures as I took them all on my sparkly keitai (mobile) and as yet haven't figured out how to get them on the computer. Working on it.

HIROSHIMA × FUKUYAMA

This weekend went to Hiroshima on Fri, then to Fukuyama to stay with my UK jet friend Rose. I've ridden the shinkansen (the bullet train) before, but this is the famous super fast one and I nerdily took a picture of it.



Hiroshima still has trams, (like Nottingham wooo) so I boarded, sat down, and only realised halfway through I was riding a bus instead. They are quite similar. Checked out the Peace Museum. Seriously sobering stuff, but the millions of elementary school kids running around in their cute yellow hats seemingly oblivious to the sombre tone of the place made it less heavy. Don't want to get too far into this as it's kind of obvious and it's more being there than anything I can say about it, but really hits home about what happened here and really makes you hope the joker in charge of N. Korea doesnt ever get so ronery as to be in a place where he can hit the big red button. I've heard different arguments about whether it was necessary or not to drop the bomb, but the museum isn't about that at all. It reports both the facts of the war and the science behind the bomb quite dryly - and that is emotionally heavy enough. (The little red warheads on the globe represent the amount of nuclear weapons in the world.)




Then wandered through the end of the museum and through the Peace Park, based at ground zero of the explosion. There's the burnt out A-bomb tower as it's called, one of the few buildings that (barely) survived the flattening of the city, and its been preserved exactly as it was. Don't know if it's the done thing to take your pic in front of atomic ruins, but here it is. Some hippies were singing loudly and badly under the bridge.



At lunch I had Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki. I think I mentioned it before, round here we have Osaka style which is fantastic, over there they put noodles in it and it's more eggy. Sorry Hiroshima, yours is okay, but nothing on Kansai style. Had more plans to wander down past the shopping area to a big park where there's a museum of contemporary art and a cool sounding manga library, but got stuck firstly in the shopping area trying to work out how to send stuff at the post office and then in



Oh Tower. How I missed you since you shut down your London branch. I spend close to 2 hours browsing the jazz and hip hop and club jazz and broken beat and I love this place. It's in a large department store building on the 9th floor with a club on the next floor up. I don't think I would find this very cool in the UK but this is Japan and it works (can you imagine drunk punters taking a department store lift to the 10th floor for a club - and down again after the night's over?). Then it was time to take a more conservative shinkansen over to Fuk.

First night we went out, Rose my friend from the UK, Yann her French boyfriend, and 4 teachers that she works with, 2 guys 2 girls. She had trouble recognising one of the teachers at first cos he was dressed like a little wannabe rudeboy, with a cap off to one angle and baggy sportswear. Even the other guy looked like a teenage dressing up for a night out, little ring on a chain etc. Anyway, we went to an izakaya (eaty drinky place for groups) and had loads to drnk, eat and was fun (rudeboy teacher turned out to be hilariously addicted to Pachinko. We were talking about birthday celebrations in Japan and he was like 'This year birthday, Pachinko. Last year's birthday.... Pachinko. One year my birthday was on my graduation! ............. and then pachinko.' - Pachinko is a dull as shit gambling game that looks superficially a bit like pinball.)

Next day hung around with Yann and Rose in Fukuyama. Really nice to see people who you met before Japan, it's almost like going home in some little way. In the evening another UK jet came down, Hannah, and we went out for some Fuk people's birthday to an izakaya..... that turned out to be the same one as the previous night. Hehe. Food was all different though. Loads of JETs there, maybe close to 30 or 40? Big noise big atmosphere. At times a bit in your face for the European contingent but we all had a good time overall, good food good drink with friends. After we headed out of there, headed out in Fukuyama and had a fantastic night, met some wicked people.



Cool things about Fukuyama: BATS. Loads of bats. Coming back next to the river one night there were loads swooping and soaring around. Next day next to the station there were MASSIVE flocks of what looked like birds doing their formation thing but on close inspection it seemed to be bats...woah. FUTARINORI. Like a lot of cities here, it's a bike place. 2 to a bike is technically illegal here but very popular and it's called futarinori and Yann and Rose quickly became masters at it, leaving me to ride the badass girls bike with two baskets you see above. BREAKFAST. Okay so this isn't a Fuk thing, more Yann's French influence but brioche and drinking chocolate for dipping is a hell of a step up from the sub frosties Calpee stuff I normally eat. Oh and check this building: Looks like a church, right? It's a fake chapel where they have weddings and functions - and they hire a western guy to dress up and pretend to be the priest! That's just beautiful.



Everyone on JET has a different experience. We're all in different situations in different schools in different sized places in different regions (I could almost feel some difference in being out of Kansai) and we all make different lives out of it. Mine's like the traveller, living out of a suitcase and getting around - which is really fun, but feels kind of transient. It was really cool to visit Yann and Rose who have more of a 'place' set up (in an awesome apartment), a dose of normality in crazy Japan.

Nomihohdear

Nomihodai is
all you can drink, very cheap
got carried away

cutest bartender
her hat doesn't suit pablo
from here it's hazy

i think sabrina
was on the television
it didn't seem strange



many plans, cancelled
on Sat due to hangover
need aquarius*

'the national mu-
seum of art osaka'
takes the whole haiku



shinsaibashi night
crazy food and late night shops
apple store is small




inside the station
groups breakdancing together
to small radio



Sun: kobe harbour
kids on bikes, earthquake
park and odd artwork




*its a 'sports drink' (read: hangover drink.)

Local festival goings on and whatnot

This weekend I stuck around Tamba (the cluster of towns around this area) to attend a festival. It was a couple of towns over, in a place called Ichijima, so all us local JETs who attended stayed the night on Saturday with a different family. We arrive on Saturday and are introduced to our host family. The woman who comes to pick me up seems really friendly and a little odd.

She's a little elderly, dressed a bit like an 80s pop star (matching denim jacket [popped collar] and jeans). She drives an old wide sedan, and as we drive off, she says 'I saw on your information sheet you like jazz.' (I write it everywhere, seems to be a good conversation starter.) So she's putting a tape in as she says this, and I'm like yeah this is gonna be some wicked jazz or something and she's like 'me.... not so much. I love Justin Timberlake. Do you love him?' Sexyback comes on. He's not bad I reply, not lying. She pushes further. 'I especially loved Nsync. Did you love them?' Not so much, I reply. She says that they broke up because one of the members wanted to go to space. For some reason I know that this was Lance Bass, so saying this makes us Firm Friends. But it doesn't stop there. Do you love Britney Spears? Jessica Simpson? 'Um....' I don't want to make a bad impression so I tell her I like them a bit. Misteeq? "THEY'RE BRITISH' I say, happy to have found a way out. We arrive at her house.

It's before 5 in the afternoon, and the minute her husband sees me he says 'beer or whiskey?' I tell him both are good, which he takes to mean I want both so within 10 mins we're drinking. He's quite a cool guy, 30 years ago he travelled around Europe so with my shitty Japanese and his speaking-to-a-retard-child Japanese we manage to have a fun conversation. As we drink we talk about really random stuff until we start to get so drunk there's no way we're getting over the language barrier. I remember having a moment of clarity as the evening wore on: I was half watching this anime about Korea, drinking Henessey with Pepsi NEX (he was surprised people mix spirits with coke in the UK and insisted we have it that way after that), eating this cool Japanese stew, stroking a male shitzu dog with massive pink bows in his hair, and talking to a slightly weird couple about anything and everything...fun times. I was in bed by 9, absolutely wasted. (In a massive traditional Japanese room, it was beautiful.) Surreal.

Anyway next day is FESTIVAL day. Wake up early and have traditional Japanese breakfast (nice, but my stomach is not ready for fish with rice and miso soup with Japanese cockles in at 9 in the morning) before heading off. There's a big area where different groups come in holding shrines on two beams on their shoulders. They jump around a bit and rotate the shrine and stuff before setting it down.



We got to carry a sort of a shrine, except instead of a gold throne like thing it was big tubs of sake (rice wine) roped together. I know which I prefer.



So we carry it in set it down, and the compere comes over and chats hilariously to a couple of the JETs about where they're from etc. I squirm around hiding in the back.

"Ladies! Oh My Gosh... For the ravers! Inside!"

Then guys come over with a hammer, bust open the crates and it's sake for all!


So yeah, a few square wooden cups of sake and lunch later, we head off to see a sake brewery and a temple. Pics can tell this bit.




The guy hugging the big tank of Sake? He was a friend of our translator guy (a friendly young student whose hometown was Ichijima so he'd come back for the festival - there's a picture of him and his girlfriend in the next section) He was really drunk and kept asking people if we thought he could get a girlfriend. When the guy who was transslating messed up a bit, in a jokey way his girlfriend went and gave him a big hug, and drunkenly looking on, poor drunk guy with no girlfriend started hugging the sake tank instead. Later he hugged a pillar as well, then ran off because he was supposed to be playing Taiko in the main square but had gotten too drunk and forgotten about it. Temple (check out cool looking monk):



Oh, on the way down the mountain (little hill) that the temple was on, me and the guy who was translating were having a cigarette and his girlfriend was trying to stop him from having one and he was like 'FUCK YOU BITCH!' (I think she only knew how bad it was from our reactions) and then she chased him around for ages. That was fun.

Kids playing taiko on vans! Some of us joined in for a bit one by one. (Incidentally my taiko lessons have gotten really fun.)


Oh and there was this guy, I don't really know who he was but a local man of some note, maybe a councillor or something, he was wearing a suit with an armband with writing on it (only important people seemed to haver these.) Anyway, he was WASTED, slurring his words like anything and stumbling around. He came up to our group and was asking where people were from. He shook hand vigourously with the Iranian couple, saying something about they should have nuclear weapons, then asked me. I said I was from England and the dude SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE... kind of slow and jokingly, and started to slur on about how England was America's bitch. He asked the Americans where they were from and sort of walked away pretending to ignore them when he found out. He also picked up one of our group and sort of hugged her which mortified the other Japanese people around... He literally had to be dragged away protesting (but, hilariously, in a respectful way). Here is a picture of this awesome guy.


Those were the highlights of the festival. Came back on Sunday still a bit under the influence so couldn't drive, stayed at Dylan's place along with his girlfriend Heather and Shivana (victim of official guy above) and just chilled watching some Peep Show courtesy of a package from my housemate Ali (first tinge of homesickness - from peep show?) Went to a potluck party the next and was confronted by the double cuteness of DOGS and JAPANESE TODDLERS (I have a friend who is obsessed by how cute they are and keeps looking at Japanese men wondering only half jokingly if they can 'give her cute babies' .........)

Also this week took my car to the garage, and got told its gonna cost 40,000 yen (200 quid) to cover the scratch :o( got a loan car til then, a tiny little kei car, like driving a matchbox.