Inner Flight

(This post must be read while listening to Searching by Roy Ayers.)

Ups and downs. That's the best way to describe the time here. As you can probably tell from the blog, it's usually way more ups than downs, but when you do get down, it's so different from normal. Something to do with being away from your usual people and things who help, and it hits you quicker.

A more chilled weekend. Friday night just chilled at my place with the student teacher who I've become close to and she's helping me a bit with my Japanese. We just watched some Ally McBeal (reminds me of home, Hugh and Jenna used to watch it in our house at uni and during college I used to watch) - which strangely enough made me miss... something but I don't know what. I think when you're in that mood anything can set you off. Saturday headed down to Kobe to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen for a while. Picked up some great music that I'd probably be raving about were I feeling a bit more genki:


Unfortunately my friend had to work the following day and so only had time for dinner, so it looked like I'd be heading back up to Tanba early that night which seemed kind of shit at the time, when you're in that mood the last thing you want to do is be alone in the inaka. Called a friend who was going out in Osaka and headed out there instead after dinner. Was great to catch up with my friend before that though, we just chilled in an izakaya having a few beers and some nabe, smoking vanilla cigarettes listening to Coltrane (thanks again Japanese restaurants) and talking to each other about Life Plans (she's deciding whether to leave the country on an Adventure- of course, my advice was Go For It.) Was still feeling a bit down, and in a kind of dont care mood stupidly spent Y15000 (£75) that I don't really have to spare on a ring... which most frustratingly couple hours later was scratched to shit in the club... stupid.

Commercial hiphop club, got drunker than I've been in ages. I don't say this proudly. I know I'm not 16 anymore and it's not cool or novel to get really wasted. Maybe being on a bit of a downer pushed me on, I don't know... but either way I was out of it. Didn't do anything stupid though so was okay. Clubbing nights in the UK generally end with a kebab, over here its all about the 5AM gyudon (beef and rice bowl). Came back to Aogaki (which is always a lonesome experience in the morning), slept through my stop for the first time ever and ended up even more in the countryside than normal. Even more pretty there though. Came back sunday mid morning, went for ramen with my supervisor, then we went back to mine to play winning eleven 10 (pro evo) for most of the afternoon. Had more people round in the last few weeks than I have since I got here practically. (Still single figures I think, I'm not really living the Tanba life wholeheartedly.) It's weird, you can have weekends you spend mostly by yourself and feel fine, yet then you can spend time with different people over a whole weekend and feel lonely. I guess when you're in that mood, nothing you can do really.

I'm feeling a little introspective at the moment. Situations have changed a little, I'm more than halfway through my time, thinking about the future, the past, etc etc. Feel like my perspective is changing. Missing people I love, missing people I know I shouldn't be, thinking about What's Next after I get back. Will things have changed? What do I want for the future? In thought.

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P.S. Two new random banners, Beer and Snow.

Okayama Naked Man Festival

Okayama Naked Man Festival: does exactly what it says on the tin. Thousands of Japanese folk and a handful of foreigners remove all their clothes in the freezing February night air (with added drizzle this year), don a fundoshi (loin cloth worn in a similar way to a nappy) and some thin cloth socks then pack into a temple far too small to acommodate them and struggle over lucky sticks.

First you strip in a tent and have a Japanese guy tie your fundoshi. This feels like ten wedgies at once. Then run around the temple in the freezing air, dipping into a pool of ice cold water (which makes your mind go completely blank, it's interesting) chanting together 'Washoi! Washoi!' Heeding good advice we'd all had a couple of drinks beforehand, I wasn't drunk by any means but it was nice to have a little something taking the edge off the cold.

There are some teams, companies mainly it seems, from young salarymen to old timers, all bonding through that classic ritual of fighting over lucky sticks. (?) And a bunch of yakuza, who wear black fundoshi (everyone else is in white) although the only one I was struggling up against (ooh betty) in the temple seemed more cheery than your regular competitor. Here's me avoiding the paps.



When we all pack into Saidaiji Temple, it's proper madness. I was lucky enough to be in the centre most of the time, because round the edges are where the stairs are up to the top and most injuries happen through falling (or being thrown) down the stairs. When you're in the massive pack of bodies, you basically have no control over anything, and as it gets closer to midnight, somehow more and more people shove in the space that was already more than completely full. With so many people all stepping on your feet, I frequently simply lifted both my feet off the ground, and the squeeze of bodies was so tight that I was carried easily and didn't fall a single centimetre towards the floor. For me it was a 'lets protect our lungs' exercise as I was so close to the centre where unbelievable squashing was going on that the second I lifted my arms from my chest, the massive squash would rush in and completely wind me making it really hard to breathe. (These two photos courtesy of Lena as I was kind of busy. I don't know when she took the temple pic, but there doesn't seem to be as much fighting as later on... I'm way inside the temple in the middle somewhere.)



At midnight, monks throw shingi (lucky sticks) into the crowd, where people fight over them. The crowd starts to undulate like waves, you get pulled completely helpless side to side and backwards, which is much more scary as it's towards the steps. I had to hang on to a pillar a couple of times to avoid falling off the platform. A couple of the sticks are genuine 'super lucky' and some are fake 'a little bit lucky' sticks. My mate Tommi managed to get one of the slightly lucky ones (we assume it was anyway), but it involved a lot of crawling, getting trampled on, shoving sticks down his fundoshi (ouch) and getting a massive cut down his arse cheek. Nice. Loads of people seemed to be getting a bit hurt, and later I found out someone died this year :o( That's not cool.



But I personally had a lot of fun, and although I'm not sure if I would do it again, I'm glad I did and I'm sure it'll be one of my defining memories of Japan.

Next day, only slightly sore everywhere, had a little wander round Okayama; I really like the city. Checked the castle briefly, it's black as opposed to Himeji's white castle and quite a lot smaller. Nice views of the city, again like Himeji.


Next to it though, there are beautiful gardens. Even though they were mainly brown because we visited only a couple of weeks after the grass burning ceremony, they were gorgeous.



There were loads of old Japanese guys with stupidly expensive camera equipment taking pictures of the first cherry blossoms of the year.



This next one will only make sense to those in Japan: Galmy Mart! A parody of Family Mart, although it seems to be a den of sin rather than the life support system that is a conbini.



Also: how could you not love a city with an arcade this big and a red archway proclaiming this?


Only if you were DEAD INSIDE.

Shinkansen home and back to Aogaki where it is finally getting a bit warmer. I feel like I'm coming out of hibernation, it's great.

Happiness at Hikami Nishi

Something is up. Everybody in the school today is stupidly happy. It started this morning, when I was teaching a couple of lessons with the student teacher, and the kids were so responsive and genki, I wondered what was up. We're both only a few years older than them so I guess they relate more, but it was the best we've had it so far. They still don't like working, but they're so cute with it, like they had cards with information about cities on them and the final line in the discussion was meant to be 'that sounds interesting', and this girl was like (in Japanese) "Lau sensei, it's not interesting. It's really boring. Can I say "I think sleeping" instead?" So I taught her 'that sounds boring' and I had a whole class happily doing the work but ending the conversation with 'that sounds boring' instead. [Incidentally, when a student at the back said me and student teacher were 'best couple' complete with heart sign, instead of the expected rebuff, student teacher said 'thankyou' and blushed. Followed by a beltingly fast exchange of Japanese which she said it was 'better I didn't understand'.]

Then I had a 'debate' lesson, well not really a debate, but the students have spent about 4 lessons preparing their opinions on the topic of 'can (various animals) communicate with people?' Their opinions are so cute, at a couple of points I couldn't hold in my laughter but they didn't mind (remember this is inexplicably happy day). Each group made an argument, to which the other group responded. To the question 'can chimpanzees communicate with people', after the standard 'they can use sign language' and 'they can respond to human language' they had clearly run out of ideas as it went like this:

Group 1: "We think that Chimpanzees can't communicate with people because they can't tell the time."
Group 2: "We disagree, because chimpanzees can get up in the morning."

next reason:
Group 1: "We think chimpanzees can't communicate with people because they can't play the guitar."
Group 2: "We disagree because chimpanzees can beat a drum."

So cute . Also, I think I may have been a bit genki one day and said 'yay' a few times as there's now a group of girls who end every sentence with a super genki 'yay'. Eg, "Hello LauYAY!" "How are youYAY!" "終わったYAY!".

The third years are back as well after a number of weeks away to start preperation for graduation next week (maybe this is what's making the school's mood good) so all the third years are walking round giving everyone a big cheery hisashiburi (long time no see.) [Speaking of graduation , I have to play Auld Lang Syne at the ceremony next week. My supervisor asked me to arrange it to make it as sad as possible. "We want the students who are leaving to cry... ideally."]

On the way to cleaning [don't know if I mentioned before, every day students clean the school and teachers half help half oversee. I run tings at 2F-3F east staircase], I saw students:
*sliding down the bannisters sitting upright (pretty difficult)
*using semi-clear tape to write all over their blazers (they'd written the kanji for numbers on their arm, one guy had 百(hundred) and one 五 (five), no idea why. One had what looked like a massive penis on his back, and as his friend explained this was "男 シンボル" (man symbol) I think it probably was. As I arrived they were writing N T for new type across the front, and were sad that I didn't know what it meant. (Also, girls keep asking me S or M and I have no idea why this is.)
*a guy leggin it down the corridor giving another guy a piggy back ("Oh, Lau!! HallohowareyouImfine!!")

Remember, this is a Senior High School. So something is up to make these kids so crazy today. It could be the weather, we had a bit of sun for the first time in months, or the third years coming back, or something else. I asked kyoto-sensei (deputy head) if there was something special about today cos everyone is so genki, and he was like 'I don't know... but they do seem pretty genki don't they...'

Mystery.

Also today I had to make a list of famous monkeys (going to use them in a lesson next week). I got paid to think about this:

• King Kong
• Bubbles (Michael Jackson)
• Zephir from Babar
• A Bathing Ape
• Milo
• Abu from Aladdin
• Donkey Kong
• Diddy Kong
• Cornelius (planet of the apes)
• Super Monkey Ball monkeys
• Evil Monkey (Family Guy)
• Goku (dragonball)
• Paul Frank monkey
• Mankey (pokemon)
• Marcel from Friends
• Mojo (simpsons)
• Mr Teeny (simpsons)
• Rafiki (Lion King)
• Ape Escape (playstation)

The students mood has completely rubbed off on me! Great day.

Sapporo Snow Festival!

This weekend I flew with a bunch of other JETs to the northern island of Japan, Hokkaido. It was the Yuki Matsuri, or snow festival, where they make a whole bunch of sculptures out of snow and ice, really beautiful stuff. There was a massive ice version of a Japanese castle and various big artworks with stages in front, as well as smaller ones made by students and (seemingly) normal people (including lots of characters like Ghibli stuff, Doraemon, Anpanman, kitty etc). There were ones to represent each country as well, the dragon below represents HK, and the description of the American one made me laugh:





There were lots of stages with things going on, including right outside where we got some hot cinnamon wine, a J-pop band miming along to their latest cheesy release. Fun!



We wandered round the snow sculptures, then down to the Sapporo TV tower where from the top you can get a great view of the main street. The queue for the lift was 40 mins, so we decided to... run up. 100 metres or so up you get a beautiful view of the city.



From Sapporo's official website:

In the towns and villages in whole country about 3000 Sapporo was the 5th Japanese city in only 130 years. Why would it be able to achieve such thing? Sapporo is the city filled in mystery and a romance. Wouldn't everyone like to explore Sapporo, which floods such charm?

Then we were well hungry and it was off to an izakaya to drink special Sapporo Classic beer and eat. After this, we headed over to the ice sculptures in Susukino, which is also the going out part of town. You would not believe how many girls, in temperatures below zero, are still going out with shortish skirts. Japanese dedication to fashion is unbelievable. Looked at the sculptures (unfortunately the ice bars had already close) before heading to a commercial hiphop/reggae club amusingly called Booty, which I'm happy to say is not a misrepresentation of the place. Stumbling back to the hotel at 8.30 next morning, it's safe to say Sapporo is a lot of fun :o)

(Even though I lost my favourite Comme Ca hat in some bar, or I have a niggling feeling I may have given it away a la Benny Sings in No More Drinks For Me.)



Next day, headed to snowland or something, on Alex's suggestion. Was okay but nothing really special. I don't think we teased him enough for taking us there. Check all these little snowmen the kids were making there.



Went to eat some Sapporo ramen in 'ramen alley' (they've got they're own style here, buttery and heavy, delicious) and apart from a slightly scary restauranteur, was wicked. On the way back to the hotel in a taxi, saw this massive (easily more than 2m square) logo on the side of a building and took me a while to realise what it was.



Ski lodge place was cool, rediscovered how shit I remain at pool, and the next day went snowboarding. Just wow. So much fun! It was an amazing place to learn cos there was SO much power, even falling heavily didn't really hurt. I only had one reeeeaaallly bad fall, when my legs went over my head and sort of twisted the wrong way and I landed on my upper back heavily, and I know thats the nature of the sport, but it was pretty exciting (though scary at the time) to be thinking, if this was on a street I'd be severly injured. Beautiful mountain views, and Japanese fashion dedication extended to the slopes, with dozens of well turned out young boarders, including what we dubbed 'cute girl ski group' of 6 boarders all in perfect makeup at the end of a long day boarding. Respect! The love of lounge music here extended to the music being piped out of the skilifts and over the mountains a bit, which I loved, and brilliantly during the day I heard both Stevie Wonder's Superwoman/Where Were You Last Winter and Jazztronik's Love Tribe. Still so impressed with Japan's love for decent music.


Went for some night boarding, with the slopes moodily lit (not amazing visibility but such a great atmosphere) and with so few people around and so much powder, was sublime. Towards the end, riding over freshly fallen snow towards the meeting place, it was rippling around the board just like water in a pool, absolutely breathtaking. Back in the lodge, it was almost like being out of Japan, run by canadians and everything western style, roast chicken and veg for dinner, watching Zoolander on the big screen playing pool, like we had gone to a different country.



Next day though (and even more today) my legs ached SO BAD, I couldn't walk properly. Came back to Kansai, remembering to buy this little chocolate you can only get in Sapporo for the other teachers. At Chitose aiport in Sapporo, saw THIS plane: (I imagine it only takes you to really fun places)

Himeji Castle+Art Fair, Osaka Gyoza+Games

I thought about it and realised what my blog was missing: square photos.

Himeji: nice little city. Got a really famous castle. Had a little look round, really striking.




Himeji City art fair: I think the artists were mainly from Himeji and not professional. A real mix, from the more traditional styles to the out there. Sculpture, pottery, painting, photos, was really interesting.




We ate at a place called Uotami, which is an Izakaya. In general in Japan, they believe in specialism when it comes to food, so most restaurants only serve one sort of food. Izakayas are the exception, serving a little of everything, making them good for a large gathering or when you feel like lots of different things. This one was really cool, you order your food by selecting it via a wireless tablet PC docked on the side of your table. Still cannot get over how cheap eating out can be here. In a moodily lit private booth that's almost like a tiny room in itself, we ate till we literally couldnt move, tempura (deep fried stuff), tacoyaki (octopus balls), sushi, kimchee, japanese omelette, little bit of okra, sukiyaki which included ramen, slices of different meat and a massive plate of vegetables to cook in the delicious broth over a hotplate on the table, and a litre of beer to drink, and walking out paying just a shade over a tenner... man (and this was the most I've paid for dinner in a while). Did I mention they played jazz (including a small combo version of Jaco's 'Invitation'). For the first few weeks back I'm gonna feel England is robbing me over food prices all the time.

On Sunday we headed to Osaka. I'm not really into food. But one thing I really love is Gyoza. So I think its Genius of Namco to put videogames (namco funpark) and gyoza (gyoza stadium) in the same building, Namco City. We played some games downstairs first, there are some really different games, for example about 20 people sat at individual terminals looking at a massive screen playing computer horse racing playing what appeared to be a bookies sim(whats the point?), or these ones which have large tables where people bring their own special card sets and move them around to control troops in a ancient war sim. The most interesting is the new Gundam (giant robot) game (in the picture below). There are about 8 little 'pods' which show a 180 degree view, and you pilot a giant robot, battling against the others. People are SO INTO this. There is a giant flatscreen monitor showing an overview of the battle which people are glued to, there is a HUGE queue for it staffed by a lady in a fake Gundam style pink uniform taking names, and they distribute printed maps of the areas you can fight in so you can plan your game well ahead of time. I think I want to play this once before I leave Japan, but for then it was all about taiko game. Then we went upstairs and tried loads of speciality gyoza (foot long gyoza, pink, orange and yellow gyoza, gyoza with spring onion on the top in a thin sauce, thick beef gyoza), it was fantastic. Writing this, I want some gyoza so badly right now.




I rounded off the week of doing stupid things (puncturing a tyre, losing my keys) by leaving my spare keys in Ouzumi, making my total journey home about 4 hours (when its should be less than 2). If only I'd listened when I was a kid when my dad told me to engage my brain before doing things. I think its too late now.

Ive been trying to set a budget for the weekends, as I keep spending way too much money. I kind of failed again this weekend for various reasons, but this one I don't feel guilty about. Found it in Beams, how could you not buy it?



Thanks, Japan.