Azumashii

Back to Blog!

2007-04-02T03:57:00.000+09:00

Ahhh it has been a while. Things have been a tad busy, what with 3 months travelling up China, through Mongolia, Siberia and the Baltic States back to Europe, then finding a flat and a job in London. Phew! What with being a tad preoccupied with sorting out my life after more than two years continuously out of the country, I hadn't got around to setting up the internet and therefore any blog-related activities were not possible. Until last week when I discovered that my wireless laptop from work inadvertantly pirates the internet from somewhere in our block of flats - result! :)

And things seem to have come full circle, as my work is sending me back to Japan in a week's time. Chairing a meeting with the most important people in the Japanese subsidary? In Japanese? Fair to say I am more than a little intimidated. Wish me luck!

Coming home

2006-07-27T18:20:00.000+09:00

Am looking to be back in London at the end of October - can't wait to see everyone! :D

And to those of you reading this in Japan - sayonara! :'(

Hello/goodbye.... (sorry old pic)

2006-07-27T18:13:00.000+09:00

Japanese Elementary School

This is a great video my Irish friend down the road made, who also does a lot of elementary school visits like me. It really sums up what my experience is like at these schools every day!

2006-07-16T00:27:00.000+09:00

Leavers' Party

The End is Nigh

2006-07-10T08:14:00.000+09:00

With only three weeks left in Japan and eight days left at work, the realisation that the life I've lived over the last two years will soon be over is starting to creap over me. Although I can't help wondering whether leaving is not such a bad thing if North Korea continues to fire missiles directly at where I'm living. A few weeks ago, hundreds of American military men suddenly descended to work on the "secret" army base next door to my town (it seems they are working on shooting-down-missiles technology). Then last week (did you see it in the news?), North Korea test fired various missiles, which landed in the Japan Sea. Although the anti-missile stuff is going on next door to where I live and rather highlights my area as an obvious target, I don't really see North Korea's antics as any real threat to my safety. Then again, the missles, in addition to the overnight and rather intense American military presence in the area, all add to the feeling that it's time to move on.

I won't be sad to leave for other reasons too. Tsuruta has failed to provide the CIR job I was promised by the JET programme. On the other hand, it has provided me with enough challenges to keep things reasonably interesting, and I have felt my Japanese language improve a lot in my time here (although perhaps not as much as it should have done). It also sems a shame that as a result of being placed so out-of-the-way, it's been harder than it might have been in other places to meet local people of a similar age. Nearly everyone with any spark leaves as soon as they finish High School. Luckily, the lack of interesting local people below the age of forty has been counterbalanced by the rewarding time I've spent with other JETs in an international community that knows how to enjoy life.

The last two years have provided me with an incredibly chilled, stress-free lifestyle and the disposable income for more travel, lots of skiing and fun at the weekends. And if I hadn't been placed where I was, I wouldn't have met the amazing people who have made my life here the unforgettable experience that it has been.
:)

Up Hakkoda and down the other side!

2006-05-18T15:25:00.000+09:00

Lost in Translation

2006-04-21T11:09:00.000+09:00

Translating is a much more difficult and complex skill than I had ever imagined before trying my hand at it. I have become more and more comfortable with doing Japanese to English translations, as long as the field is not too specialist. Nevertheless, the more I translate, the more I respect the pros. It is an extremely difficult thing to do well.

Translating Japanese into English is one thing, but even the pros avoid translating out of their native language. Part of the art of translating is having creative skill in your native lanugage, so that once you have understood the source text, you can render a natural, artful translation. It is therefore pretty much impossible for a non-native speaker of Japanese to translate from English to Japanese well. It is possible to translate the fundamental meaning of text, but it will never hold the natural flow that could be created by a native speaker.

I was therefore very relieved when my office supervisor (much better at English than I am at Japanese) kindly said she would translate a speech about the UK I will be doing next week at a formal dinner. Rather than struggling for days with writing something in Japanese, I could instead struggle for just a few hours writing something in English.

Yesterday, I read through the Japanese text she had translated my speech into. I feel a bit mean posting it on my blog, but it is such gold I can't resist.

What I wrote:
Some schools are Gaelic-medium in Scotland, and you can watch television programmes in Gaelic. In all of Britain we use the Pound Stirling (not the Euro!), but England and Scotland print different notes, so even the money looks different.

Turned into (I'll transliterate the J):
Some Scottish Junior High Schools transmit television programmes in Gaelic. The British currency isn't the Euro. It's the Pound and Shilling. But designs on the notes are different. Even the money's different.

And this was translated by a lady who's English level is extremely high, and has been travelling in the UK for extended periods at least twice. It has served as a warning to me for my own translating: make sure you really know the background of the subject you're translating about before you begin...

Climbing up a volcano and skiing down the other side.

2006-04-19T08:40:00.000+09:00

Mt. Iwaki

I got a call from my friendly fellow Town Office worker Jumbo late on Friday night, confirming the latest weather reports that Saturday would be ok for the climb. The next morning dawned sunny and crisp, with little wind. A perfect day for hiking up a snowy volcano and skiing down the other side.

Last year we’d attempted the same thing, but the climb had to be aborted due to bad weather, and we only skied half the mountain. This year we didn’t have the weather to worry about, but as we drove closer, I suppressed mild feelings of apprehension when Jumbo and his friends commented on the icy sheen glistening across the mountainside. This anxiety wasn’t quelled by his off-handed comment, while we were waiting for the special ski bus, that a couple of people had died in an avalanche up there three years ago.

Most people ski and snowboard from the arrival bus terminal, but while everyone else headed off on their skis, we strapped ours to our backpacks and started a further ascent. 40 minutes of intense climbing later (not made easier by my unfitness, light gusts of wind catching my skis and the climb being done in ski boots), we made the first peak. We stopped for water and chocolate refreshment, and Jumbo took a moment to pray for his friend, who had tragically died over 20 years earlier in an avalanche in that very spot.

The spot where Jumbo's friend died in an avalanche, with an incredible view of Hirosaki City unfolding below us.

Another 20 minutes of climb and a traverse across the very peak of the volcano, and we could finally don our skis. The rush of wind through my hair as I skied down from the top was like the ultimate refreshment after the climb. But it seemed we’d only just got our skis on, and we had to take them off again to climb to another peak! The wind up there was intense, so we couldn’t stay long to take in the panorama, and skied over the other side of the mountain and down below the tree-line, for a well-deserved picnic.

Messing arround at on the last peak - very windy!

解答だ！

2006-03-09T14:23:00.000+09:00

Spring is in the air in Aomori! The snow has started to melt, and apart from a stubborn patch of blizzard and temperatures below zero earlier this week, we’ve been treated to beautiful blue skies for weeks. However, despite this year's snowfall seeming like a few mere snowflakes compared to last year (which boasted the biggest snowfall in twenty years around a city which is, statistically, the snowiest place of over 200,000 people in the world), there has still been rather a lot of snow to shovel away if I want to drive my car, or get through my front door.

Lucky for me, I was able to pursuade a certain somebody to shovel all the snow in front of my house this year instead of me (tee hee).

A true sign that winter is on the way out was when they ploughed the road to my house. Owing to one of the heaviest snowfalls in recorded history last year, Tsuruta Town Office ran out of money for ploughing the roads. (Luckily, Tsuruta is a farming town, so after an emercency meeting to convene its farmers, the town council managed to pursuade a group of men with tractors to volunteer to do it for free.) As a result, this year they were erring on the side of caution, and the little road my house is on was sadly neglected. As a result, all winter I had to climb out of my house onto a metre and a half of packed snow, and struggle all the way down the road. This was more often than not in a blizzard, and a foot would often break through the hard packed crust and suddenly I'd find myself thigh-deep in snow.

You can see how high the snow had piled up by the height of the snow walls either side. You can also probably see the unbridled excitement on my face at the rediscovery of tarmac anywhere near my feet.

After a few nasty blizzardy days, there's a lot more snow in front of my house now than there was when this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago. But over the last couple of days I've been able to ride to work on my bike again, I can hear birds singing, and I know it's just a matter of time before I start to see the beautiful colours that Aomori ("Green Forest") was named after.

Teaching today

2006-03-02T15:40:00.000+09:00

A guy from my dept. came to take some photos of teaching today for some promotional info the town's sending out; I did a lesson packed with fun, crazy stuff and this was the photo he came up with - the one moment in the lesson, lasting all of about 60 seconds, that was boring. Pish!

Let's Hard Gay

2006-02-17T12:28:00.000+09:00

Some time ago last year, I was teaching a very enthusiastic group of ten year olds and let them choose their own team names. “So have you decided on your team name?” I asked, after giving them a couple of minutes to come up with something (it has to be English). “Hard Gay” they chorused, excitedly. “Um, sorry?” I spluttered. “Hard Gay” the teacher helpfully reaffirmed, with an earnest expression. I tried to suppress the rising images of homosexual hanky-panky, at the same time wondering where a bunch of nine and ten year old Japanese children, who have only a few hours of English study a year, had learnt that kind of language. Needless to say, I didn’t let them have “Hard Gay” as a team name, and the poor things probably ended up with a disappointing substitute.

It didn’t take long to stumble upon Hard Gay again (HG for short). It turned out that he is a faux-homosexual character developed in 2002 by a Japanese comedian called Masaki Sumitani, who dresses up in a fetching black plastic waistcoat and hot pants combo, fitted out with bondage-type accessories, and jumps out at unsuspecting people, screaming “foooooooo” and thrusting his pelvis at them. He also does this to small children. Apparently this is absolutely hilarious, but admittedly I haven’t ever seen it on TV (I was so fascinated I went to the trouble of finding out from some of my kids when he's on, I think it's a Saturday variety show, but promply forgot). Although I’m pretty sure I’d have my reservations about the comedy-value of a grown man thrusting his plastic-hot-pants-clad crotch at children. I had wondered why all the Elementary School kids liked to go “fooo” and wave their hands in the air in a rather homosexual manner. They absolutely love him; Hard Gay is immensely popular with Elementary and Junior High School Students throughout Japan. I even saw a Hard Gay costume in a Convenience Store the other day, and disturbingly, it was child size.

It’s this kind of thing that make people want to visit Japan; to find out if it really is that weird. I think this provides yet more evidence in support of the answer that yes, it probably is.

more inda photos...

2006-01-25T15:11:00.000+09:00

Me and mum in Udaipur's palace grounds

Ewen driving us through the rubber plantations with our friendly guide Hari Krishna (really).

You never know what kind of reprobates you'll bump into randomly at Ghandi International Airport.

Being snotted on by a baby elephant.

Me looking out over the coconut palms from our houseboat in the evening in Kerela

Me and Ewen atop the palace at Kumbulgarh Fort

Me and mum about to set off on our first ride in Rajistan with the slightly insane Dr. Singh, a man with mad eyes, a dancing horse and a multi-coloured turban.

India!

2006-01-23T15:48:00.000+09:00

Over Christmas and New Year, me and Ewen jetted off to India.

Getting down to Tokyo for the flight was an adventure in itself; we had to talk our way into the airport at midnight, when we found it very closed (this is Japan’s most major international airport!). We were kindly provided with a bench surrounded by numerous blue-suited security guards, and woke up the next morning to find the deserted building transformed to a bustling transport hub, and the security guards’ place were some disgruntled-looking Chinese people spitting on the floor. It made me rather glad that this year I was going to India instead.

Our next transport hurdle cropped up when we were informed by the ticket inspector at the beginning of our 2-night 3-day train journey from Delhi to Kerela in the far south, that rather than the two beds that we thought we had, we actually had one seat between us. For the next 54 hours. Luckily for us, we were surrounded by the most wonderful Indian families, and ended up each being volunteered a bed. On the first night it hadn’t been made clear to the ticket inspector that this is what was happening, so Ewen was ousted from 4 different beds (this included his cheeky attempt at getting some shut eye in the ticket inspector's own bed - needless to say, that was ended abrubtly when the man returned).

Kerela was superb. We recovered from our train journey by floating down the palm-fringed Kerelan backwaters on a beautiful houseboat. No need to do anything but elongate oneself in the sun on the front deck, as it came complete with a personal cook, captain, and driver on board.

Back on dry land, we stayed for a couple of days at a surreal retreat on the hills of a rubber plantation. It was great to get off the beaten track, where we even encountered an elderly forest tribesman, wading down the river we were paddling in, trying to catch a fish. It was like something live off the discovery channel - he was tiny, with bloodshot eyes and the muscled physique of a hunter. Our guides had a chat with him, and he said that he’d just crept past a tiger and elephants about a kilometer upstream.

On New Year’s Eve we moved south to atmospheric Varkala, a famous but as yet unspoilt Kerelan beach with relaxing cafés and tempting shops on the clifftop that overlooks it. They put on fireworks that night and we watched them from the beach. Our one-night stay turned into almost a week, and by the time we’d left, we seemed to have made friends with many of the staff along the clifftop. It was Kerela’s incredible Malayalee people who made a beautiful place into a paradisiacal one.

Once we dragged ourselves reluctantly from Kerela, we spent a couple of days in Mumbai/Bombay. I’d been before six years ago and it seemed cleaner and more European than I remembered. Perhaps it was the seasonal difference; being the winter, all the foliage was green and lush as opposed to fried and dusty when I was there in the heat of the summer before. As we were wondering about soaking it up on the first day, we were scouted as extras in a Bollywood film, and on the second day, actually saw one being filmed in the street.

On my birthday, we arrived in Udaipur, Rajistan, where we met up with my mum in a fabulous hotel by the lakeside. Udaipur’s fame is justified. What with the rolling alleyways up to the white palace by the lakeside, the incredible views onto the lake with the floating palaces in the middle and the mountainous backdrop, you could see why they’d chosen to set the James Bond film Octopussy there. Many of the local shopkeepers were able to produce crusty photos of themselves clutching Roger Moore in a sweaty hug.

We did a round trip from Udaipur, traveling West towards the desert. First to Ranakpur, to see one of India’s greatest Jain temples at Udaipur, complete with erotic ménage-a-trois type images carved into the marble, and then to Kumbulgargh, famous for its breathtaking fort. We finished off our trip with a horse-ride through cacti-lined desert (falling off would not have been pretty) and a last bit of bargain hunting back in Udaipur. We flew out from a gloriously sunny Delhi, and knew we were back in Japan when we touched down in a determinedly grey and sleeting Tokyo. I just felt sorry for all the tourists who’d come on our flight from Taiwan on holiday.

Here are some photos of the trip!

Life imitates art in Bombay... kind of.

Ewen and I near Kollam, Kerela

Halloween Party

2006-01-18T15:13:00.000+09:00

Tsuruta has a Halloween Party, which grows every year, the last few times attracting about 200 kids. I meant to put these on back then, but better late than never!

Me, dressed as an entirely unconvincing devil (after trying to host the event under a mask and wig last year, I realised that the less convincing, the better)

Kids being terrified by Kevin, our brilliant resident zombie, in our scary Haunted House (taken in the dark, but the flash makes it look light).

Chatting to a local witch during the costume competition.

Awwww! The girl on the right is one of my kindergarten students. It's the kids who really make this job worthwhile.

A big thank you to Sara, Allison, Dee, Steve, Yumiko, Reece and Steph for going out of your way to help to make the evening fun for the kids.

Doomsday

2005-10-19T17:05:00.000+09:00

I thought it might happen one day, but was hoping it never would.

I was just on the phone to a guy about arrangements for the kiddy Halloween Party I'm organising, and when I put the phone down, one of my colleagues said with great amusement, "did you realise you were speaking some Tsugaru-dialect?" He went on to say that my intonation was quite noticeably from the local region. My Japanese is rubbish enough as it is, but now it seems that the Japanese I do speak probably has a really odd twang to the average listener – maybe the equivalent would be a Japanese person speaking English with a bizarre Geordie lilt. Aaaarrrggghhh!

Summer Holiday Pics!

2005-10-14T19:47:00.000+09:00

Finally got together some of the pictures we took (film camera) onto the computer - so can put up a few for you to see of the summer holiday to Laos and Thailand.

Ang Thong National Park, a couple of hours boat journey east from Ko Samui.
(This photo was the reward for some tough rock-climbing exploits!)

Sunburnt but smug on the beach on Ko Samui, Thailand.

Me and Nao, our 10-year-old(ish) guide, who showed us the most fabulous waterfall (below)

Nao and Ewen swimming together in the waterfall lagoon (a couple of hours by boat down river of Luang Prabang, Laos)

Walking through rice, peanut and corn fields whilst exploring the countryside around Luang Prabang, Laos

Had to be done - the old elephant ride! This was actually the best by far I've ever done, with some cool elephant-wading-through-river stuff.

Mai neimu izu

2005-09-29T10:20:00.000+09:00

I was playing a game at a kindergarten the other day, and, getting into the spirit of things, enthused to the little four year old next to me "oooh isn't this fun?!" He looked up at me, beaming, and replied, "you're really scary" (although he didn't look remotely frightened, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the game).

"Oh dear," I said, "why's that?"

"Because your eyes are weird, they're different"

"Oh, don't worry about that," I said, "I was born like it." How the blonde hair passed him by as normal I'm not quite sure.

At another kindergarten recently, a little girl asked, "Can you speak Japanese?"

"What do you think?" I said. "Do you think I can speak Japanese?" At this she looked rather confused, but still couldn't work out the answer (the conversation itself being in Japanese). Lots of kids ask me this, even much older ones, after I've done for example an entire lesson on the UK – in Japanese. The kids also get very excited when they hear me speaking English – not to them, I think they're so used to hearing instructions in English that I use in the lessons that they don't really think of it as a foreign language, but when they hear me speaking with another native speaker they love it, and get really excited.

It's hard for the kids round here to see English as a useful communication tool, as they have no chance to use it. Few of the children I teach have ever been outside of Aomori Prefecture, let alone abroad. Whereas European children are quite at home with the concept of foreign languages because they are surrounded by them (even in the UK, trips to France and beyond are accessible to even very low-income families), the more I teach here, the more I think that Japanese children in Aomori don't have the same kind of awareness of foreign language as a tool for communication. It means that the concept of a conversation in English can be quite alien, as they are just used to trotting out their English showpiece of "Mai neimu izu", and expect to be left alone after that.

With kids I see a lot, I'm trying to change this. I'm most proud of the progress of the class I visit most regularly, which are a bunch of 5-6 year olds I see for 45 minutes every week. Having seen them for six months, they are now all happy saying quite fluidly "hello, please could I have ice-cream?", or asking for something in a shop and knowing that you have to say "a t-shirt" but no 'a' for plurals ( e.g. underpants). This sounds complicated for such young kids – but that's the beauty of it, they understand it effortlessly, in a way that children of 11 or 12 can't. I teach it all through games and fun activities too, it's not like I'm sitting there giving 5 year-olds a grammar lesson. It really amazes me how much English kids are capable of; if they are seen regularly enough, they just absorb it.

In that class there is a little boy who has learning difficulties which will clearly not enable him to continue through the standard education system past a certain age. The last time I visited the kindergarten it was with the new American CIR I'll be working with, and after we introduced her and her country, I told the kids that they could ask her any question they liked. Without any prompting the little 5 year-old boy with learning difficulties put up his hand and said, in perfect English, "What animal do you like?". Until then it had always seemed as though he had been unable to consolidate much of what had been taught in his head, and had just been repeating parrot-fashion after me. I couldn't believe it, I was so proud of him. It was one of those moments that just makes your day.

The frequency of visits also makes a dramatic difference to the way the children treat and view you at different elementary schools. At one school where I only visit each age group three times a year, I was shocked to have a kid point at me and shout "gaijin da!" (impolite way of saying "it's a foreigner!") At the elementary school where I visit most age groups about once a month, the reaction ranges from a nonchalant smile of acknowledgement, to "Hi Mary-sensei, how are you?" (with effortless pronunciation). The point isn't the good English, but that I am treated as a normal, not altogether exciting human being who is visiting their school, rather than a green bug-eyed alien having just arrived from outer-space.

Summer Holidays

2005-08-08T17:05:00.000+09:00

Off we flew to Bangkok on the most bizarre flight I have ever experienced. On boarding the Biman Bangladesh aeroplane, it was like being transported back to the interior of an unfortunately decorated 70s caravan. The décor was not limited to the seats, but crept up the insides of the craft itself. Paint was flaking from the overhead baggage lockers, and there was an odd smell permeating from somewhere. Overhead vents spewed a thick white gas, which I hoped was meant to aid our breathing rather than extinguish it. Settling into our seats, far down at the other end of the craft a rickety paper screen unfolded, and rather than showing a safety demonstration, an Islamic prayer was aired, a choice line of which the subtitles read, "Allah, we hope we meet you on this flight". I hoped quietly that I wasn't ready to meet Allah quite yet. It seemed that I wasn't, as we landed safely, and I even got a glimpse of the VIP party in first class chaperoning the President of Bangladesh, who had joined us on the flight.

With a breath of relief, we slid into a taxi to take us from the airport to the centre of Bangkok. Relief soon turned to horror as I experienced one of the most terrifying journeys of my life. Our driver, incensed by our insistence that he use the metre, drove like he was bent on suicide, and wanted to take us and all surrounding drivers with him.

After surviving further Bangkok travel about the major sights (more wearing on the third visit, I discovered), we took a pleasant enough night-bus to Vientiane, in Laos, where we spend a few days lapping up the charming atmosphere and eating obscene amounts of gourmet French food, a rather wonderful legacy of the colonisation by the French (which came to an end over sixty years ago). There was a major ASEAN conference due to be held in the following week in the capital, and they were hurriedly tarmacking all of the dusty central roads in preparation. It was certainly the most peaceful capital I have ever been to, with monks draped in orange robes wandering amongst the Buddhist Wats and an understated bustle along the streets. One day, we rented motorbikes and wound out of town, passing grand new houses in the suburbs, a telling sign of disproportionate wealth in a Communist country.

It wasn't long until our next nightmare journey, this time on a nightbus going to the historic city of Luang Prabang (UNESCO World Heritage Site). We were slightly anxious about the journey, as it was along a questionable stretch of road where a year before bandits had held up a bus and shot the passengers, as well as two Swiss tourists who were cycling past and got caught in the fire. In a bid to secure the road, the government had posted a rifle-wielding teenager on buses plying the route – or at least, that's what we assumed the baby-faced adolescent was doing with a huge gun at the back of the bus. Not convinced that his presence wouldn't make a potentially heated situation worse, I felt even less positive about him when he fell asleep in the seat behind me with his gun pointing directly at my back (I thought it may be prudent to move at that point). Gun-totting teenager added a distracting twist to our journey, but it was the Thai pop music blaring at full volume throughout the night and insane bus driver, pushing it to the limit around hairpin turns over the mountains that made any suggestion of sleep impossible.

Luang Prabang is a lovely place, but get there quick before all the visitors have finished sucking its soul dry. The first thing we saw as we staggered off the hellish night bus was a line of monks queuing for alms. This interesting insight into local life was offset by tourists crowding close, probing the space with big lensed cameras and licking their lips like vultures over carrion. The monks, many of them young boys, looked uncomfortable. I sympathised; there are plenty of occasions living as a foreigner in Japan when you feel treated like a bizarre animal in a zoo.

We took a boat along the Mekong to a beautiful waterfall, and swam and played with the boat owner's son, who showed us the best places to go. Despite being about 10 years old, he climbed the highest tree he could find before jumping into the blue lagoon below (it was quite terrifying to watch). In the mountains around Luang Prabang, we went on a trek through the jungle where we saw the locals growing sesame, peanuts and rice (on dry land!), and did the last bit by elephant. The elephant ride was by far the best I've experienced; we were taken on a route that would have been impossible to do by any other means, stomping through jungle into a fast flowing river, and wading to a little island.

It wasn't long before we were back in Thailand again, with the last few days on the beach. We did a tough climb up through a forest on one of the islands we took a boat out to. As I pulled myself up the mountain, I couldn't help wondering whether a short beach skirt was the most appropriate attire for rock-climbing. It was all worth it though; we saw some monkeys and were rewarded by the most stunning view of the tropical islands which make up Ang Thong National Park.

But before I knew it, there I was, back in the 70s caravan, listening to an Islamic prayer and wondering if it really constituted an adequate safety demonstration. But it must have worked, because we were soon touching down in Japan safe and sound.

Wyn

2005-08-05T11:51:00.000+09:00

It's 35 degrees in the office, and the mayor has still not allowed the aircon to be put on (too expensive - not that he seems to think this about his very dodgy "business trips" to far-flug European destinations which quite clearly Tsuruta has absolutely no relation to whatsoever). Kindergarten visits are very cute, but when you have to teach two classes together in an un-air conditioned gym like I did this morning it feels like you're melting. Not looking forward to next Tuesday when I'm scheduled to clean the Town Office toilets in this heat (Mayor fired all the cleaners)!

Moan terminated.

Tsugaru-ben Taikai!

2005-07-13T16:37:00.000+09:00

Phew! Last weekend was our biggest event of the year, a competition for foreigners to give performances in the regional dialect, which I organised with my boss. We've had locals phoning up and enquiring about the contest for months, as it's in its ninth year and has become pretty well known. (Watching the characters in the audience, a large portion of them ageing apple farmers, is entertainment in itself). Since I arrived in Japan I've been busy coercing other JETs to take part; we had fourteen contestants performing skits, two sexy swing dancers, a guitar solo and a couple of stick-wielding martial artists. If any of you guys are reading this THANK YOU SO MUCH for all your hard work and amazing performances! The event was covered by local reporters, and made it onto TV, plus I've seen it in three local newspapers so far. Toonippo newspaper put their article online. I could write more about it, but am getting blogging fatigue after not writing for so long and it just so happens that Jamie Patterson, the world-famous v-blogger, played a major role ("Tree") in one of the performances, and has recorded the event for posterity on his website - so if you have an interest, take a look at that!

As for me, my work is done here in Tsuruta for now, so I'm off to South East Asia to relax and recuperate after working very-slightly-harder-than-not-at-all on the run up to the dialect competition event. But I'll soon be back for all the Aomori festivals and to welcome all the new JETs to their new home!

By the way, PLEASE leave me comments or I'll have to conclude that nobody reads this and there's no point in writing it (and now Chatterbox has deserted me too! *sob*)

The Wedding Singer

2005-06-09T13:16:00.000+09:00

I went to my first Japanese wedding at the beginning of Golden Week. On arrival I was stripped of seventy quid (US$150), which is what each guest paid to attend. The reception was lavish and there was extravagant food and wonderful cocktails to be taken advantage of (which I dutifully did). There were some interesting cultural dimensions to the ceremony, such as the way the bride and groom were ushered about the hall in which we sat by a man who looked as though he was directing a Boeing 747, clad in white gloves and waving his hands around to indicate to them when to bow, how fast to walk, and in exactly which direction. For me, the most memorable part of the event came when I was forced to sing completely against my will as one of the four guests asked to do karaoke (the others were special guests such as the mayor, the vice mayor, and the bride's two best friends). I found myself on stage in front of 300 or so wedding guests, screeching like a hyena being strangled and feeling wracked with guilt that I was ruining this poor couple's wedding. The song I was forced to sing was deeply inappropriate �C it's called �ۤθ� (Love Song), but a choice line goes something like "we're always fighting and it's devouring us". I did point this out to the deputy head, who was the one forcing me to sing (along with the fact that my throat closes up with nerves when singing in front of lots of people), who gleefully ignored my desperate begging and strode off to request my song. He claimed that the lyrics had absolutely no relation to the wedding and it didn't matter ( ��v�S�ʤ��裡��)�� Suffice to say his judgement was a tad impaired by alcohol consumption. And the best part is that the whole wonderful performance was captured by a professional cameraman for all eternity.

test

2005-06-09T13:09:00.000+09:00

does this work I wonder....?

Off to Kyoto!

2005-04-27T17:06:00.000+09:00

I'm off down south for Golden Week (lots of Japanese bank holidays!) so won't check my emails for ages, so if there's anything important please get me on my mobile.

And GOOD LUCK to those of you studying for impending exams.

:-)

2005-04-13T15:49:00.000+09:00

As winter recedes, I am freed from the hibernation it has engendered, no longer forced into the isolating confines of my house, holed up against white tides of snowy suffocation. An urge to rediscover the forgotten, buried colour seeping back into the bleached landscape inspired me to take off on my bicycle around Tsuruta. The tired, ramshackle qualities of the town lend it a certain charm I had never noticed before. Thatched, mossy houses lie tucked secretly back from the road. Elderly farmers loiter in the orchards, brooding over their battered, ginger-skinned apple trees. A gnarled face draws back into the shadows of a doorway, surveying me with a tentative smile as I roll by. It is the timeworn muted colour of this place that provides equilibrium to the Japan Inc. of quick flashing neon Tokyo lights. It is times like this when I feel privileged to be experiencing a hidden world, the mortality of which is as tangible as the impending death of the final apple-farming generation.

Cost-cuts, floods and chauffeurs

2005-04-08T12:09:00.000+09:00

The latest in the cost-cutting mania since the firing of all the cleaners is that the mayor isn’t letting us put on the aircon in the summer. Anyone reading this who was in Japan last summer will appreciate the kind of discomfort I’m now anticipating. This summer is apparently forecast to be even hotter and more unpleasant, so without aircon I am likely to melt and die in a sweaty, smoke-filled Town Hall.

Half of Tsuruta is currently submerged underwater in the worst flood in years and years. There was a lot of rain so the town up the road had to let some water through the dam. Then there was a thunder storm. And the majority of the vast quantity of snow that was still lying melted. So if I look out of the Town Hall window, what is usually fields, apple orchards and the local snow dump is water, water with the tips of trees sticking out, and water with some sorry looking blackened snow rising above the flood in little islands. The poor apple farmers really aren’t having a good time of it recently.

Nobody in my department has changed in the big April personnel moves, but I have discovered this week that one of my most favourite of all locals, our wonderful driver Nakano-san, has been promoted to be the mayor’s chauffeur. This is great and I’m really pleased for him, but when I’m waiting out in the cold for the awful driver who is only capable of communicating in grunts of impenetrable dialect, is always late and never knows where we’re meant to go, I can’t help missing the competent, thoughtful Nakano-san, who I had some really good chats with. Not sure how he's taking to his new job, as disaster struck poor Nakano-san on his third day, when he scraped a huge gouge out of the side of the mayor’s very expensive car (his predecessor had been driving the mayor for thirty years and never had an accident). Hopefully the mayor’s nicer to Nakano than he was to the poor cleaning ladies.