Hey people,
So not much to report at the moment...
I'm sitting at my desk pretending to work on the computer but actually spending the whole time moping the sweat off my brow and making cold drinks. Jeff has banned me from buying any more tea atm (I only have nine packets atm - what a meanie :p), so I am experimenting with making my own iced tea. My apple iced tea is ok. Tastes a little odd, but I'm sure that's just because I'm scrutinising it so closely...
However, I figure anything to save money on drinks - it is so hot here that we spend a fortune on cold beverages. I think Jeff had two beers and a can of cola yesterday while I'm drinking heaps of iced 'ocha' - green tea. Half and half with water, it makes a wonderfully refreshing drink. Odd, considering I 'don't like' green tea!
Currently there is really loud thunder overhead. There was a little bit of rain, maybe an hour ago, but lots more thunder. I find it odd having thunderstorms without rain, and often I have seen lightening without thunder, or heard thunder without lightening. I'm not sure whether that is just the mountains blocking the sound and the light hiding the lightening or what... Maybe it's just Japanese thunder and lightening doesn't follow NZ rules and feels no need to hang out together, instead striking out on it's own...
Oh, big news: We bought a bed! I got sick of putting away the futon every morning - especially since we are soft-arse white people and slept on two each, so that was four futon to put away every morning and get out every night, plus sheets, covers and pillows. But more importantly, our mariatal bed looked like two kids camping out. If you moved too much in your sleep, the futon even moved apart from each other and you woke up with a gap between the two in the morning.
So on Saturday we went into Fukuyama city in search of a bed. The bed I had liked the previous weekend was already sold, but a second secondhand store had a new bed in (there are clearly lots of us Europeans trying to get the comfort of home without paying for a Brand New Very Expensive bed!). It was a little more expensive, but I figured it was worth it, to save us the hassle of missioning it back into Fukuyama on another bed hunt.
In all reality, Fukuyama is not so far from our house. In an NZ car with NZ speed limits it would only be half an hour or so. However, in our little kei car (up the hill... chuggachuggachug... "you can do it, little car!!"), with 50kmph speed limits it is a SLOW trip. What makes it even slower is that on the country roads you invariably get stuck behind a vvvveeeerrrrrrryyyyyy sssssllllllllooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww driver (no really, it happens so often that on Saturday night Jeff commented with surprise that we hadn't got stuck behind anyone that night!) and when you hit the city border the traffic is HEAVY. It seems to be rush hour traffic whenever we enter Fukuyama, no matter what time of day. Feels a bit Truman Show - you know, with all the traffic leaping into the shot at once, because you have turned up.
Anyway, to avoid the Fukuyama traffic again, I voted buying the more expensive bed and Jeff went with it (I fear, in Jeff's efforts to not make me feel bad about spending the money he is earning us, he is leaving more of the financial decisions to me than he normally would. Or maybe he never cared about that stuff and always let me pick but I never noticed it because I was bringing in $$ too then...).
On the Sunday, our bed was delivered and put together by the friendly Japanese blokes in their mint-green overalls. I was a little concerned about them carrying the mattress up the steepsteep stairs in socks, but telling a Japanese person to leave there shoes on inside is like telling a Kiwi to sunbathe naked in public - it's Not Going to Happen. Luckily they were careful and we now have a lovely new double bed. Admittedly it was odd last night, going from a queen bed in NZ, to being sprawled out on the bedroom floor, to now being confined to a double bed, but we managed to avoid each other's sweaty limbs and get a decent sleep. Bring on the cooler weather!
Today I had my daily Japanese lesson with Ken-san, a local bloke who teaches at the Jinseki chugakko (Junior High). He did the equivalent to the JET programme teaching Japanese in USA for a year and half, so his English is really good, and he has been to NZ to compete in an Iron Man competition, so he is... a little crazy, but in a good way. I'm hoping when it cools down he can take Jeff and I on some hikes and stuff. He has been really helpful and supportive for me, teaching me Japanese every day and organising things so I can be a volunteer assistant teacher in their school - which basically means I can hang out there all I like, attending English classes to help teach, Japanese classes to learn and anything else I think interesting includingn cooking and sports classes. While it kills me to give up all my free time, it will be an amazing opportunity to learn the language and it was really sweet of them to make sure I'm not stuck at home turning into Bertha Rochester (Jane Eyre, for those that didn't get the reference... I know many of you don't read the classics. Or just don't read).
My daily lesson is bookended by waving children; to get to the school I walk past the school yard - a large bare patch of dirt, which the children are instructed to hand-pick to keep it like that. There is an almost constant game of baseball, although the age of the children playing varies from teeny to almost adult sized. When I walk past, one of the boys usually turns around and stares. I wave and the whole team waves back, yelling some greeting or other. I call back 'Ohayo' and that seems to keep them happy. Sometimes I also have girls hanging out the second-storey classroom windows doing the same, or their volleyball game in the gym goes quite as they watch me walk past. Most of the kids are excited to see me, but sometimes they look very shy and rather freaked out. I guess I can understand that sentiment, as they feel under pressure to speak in English and it can be scary taking what you learn by rote in the classroom and trying to hold a conversation with it (trust me, I know!).
Hmm... considering I had nothing much to say, this has turned out really long!!
Please feel free to leave comments, particuarly questions on what aspects of life here I have not informed you of so far - it is all so different it can be hard knowing where to start!
Miss you guys,
Charly (& Jeff)
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
It's cooling down. Or I'm going crazy. Equally likely...
Hey people,
This is more of a catch-up post. It's Thursday afternoon and I'm sitting with a cold drink and a cold fan and a sweat cloth. BUT I think it's really cooling down. I mean, the only part of me sweating is my bum, where it touches the chair. And my hands, where they touch the keyboard. And trust me, that's a big improvement!
Actually, I think it also helps heaps that I went for a run this morning. Crazy, yes, to go for a run in 30 degree heat, but I get SO hot that the rest of the day can't help but feel cool by comparison!!
My runs are really really hard though. Not just because of the heat and not just because I have no fitness atm, but also because the whole time I'm out I am aware of how freakish I am and how stared at I am. Not only am I the tallest woman in the town, I am the only blonde, the only foreign female, the only one in a hot pink singlet (I figure it minimises my chances of getting hit by any of the crazy inaka - country - drivers), the only person with a face that matches their hot pink singlet (it's really really hot, ok!!! I got a toot from a truck driver, but I think it no coincidence that he was behind me and hadn't seen my face lol) and, I believe, the only adult that gets any intentional exercise!! Watching the little old ladies hobbling out to work in the rice paddies I can understand that going for a jog isn't high on their adgenda, but I feel like I should be carrying a sign 'I don't have a rice field so I have to run, ok??'
Oh, I am also freakish because the Japanese women go to any extent to avoid the sun. They wear long-sleeved tops even in this heat, and if they are wearing tshirts, they wear long gloves that meet their tshirt sleeves. Then they wear long pants, a hat, sunscreen and carry a parasol. There are whole stores dedicated just to parasols here. So for a woman to go for a run in the sun wearing shorts and a sleeveless top is an unheard-of (and before you say anything Mum, it was 8:30am, so I didn't get sunburnt!).
Luc, Jeff's Canadian co-worker and the only other non-Japanese in the town, told us only tramps get a tan in Japan. I thought that sounded pretty harsh until, in town, we saw the girls he was talking about. Heavy makeup, sky-high strappy heels, very little clothing and a beautiful tan. I'm not sure how to explain them because, in all honesty, my description doesn't really explain the difference between the trashy Japanese and the stylish Japanese (except for the tan), but the trashy girls here look like NZ hookers. That kind of over-done. Also, these women are so thin its unbelievable. Some of them make me very envious. Many of them freak me out and make me want to get them some KFC.
Ok, that's my wee moan about being the town weirdo. Hopefully if I keep up my new exercise regime (two days so far, lol) they will get used to me and stop staring... In the meantime I'm getting my head round being four times the size of the locals (maybe I exaggerate... five times!). Sometimes they make me feel bad for being so much bigger, but I'm also so much taller it's like comparing a St Bernard and a Chihuahua. So I just don't (much...).
Hope y'all are doing good at the bottom of the world...
This is more of a catch-up post. It's Thursday afternoon and I'm sitting with a cold drink and a cold fan and a sweat cloth. BUT I think it's really cooling down. I mean, the only part of me sweating is my bum, where it touches the chair. And my hands, where they touch the keyboard. And trust me, that's a big improvement!
Actually, I think it also helps heaps that I went for a run this morning. Crazy, yes, to go for a run in 30 degree heat, but I get SO hot that the rest of the day can't help but feel cool by comparison!!
My runs are really really hard though. Not just because of the heat and not just because I have no fitness atm, but also because the whole time I'm out I am aware of how freakish I am and how stared at I am. Not only am I the tallest woman in the town, I am the only blonde, the only foreign female, the only one in a hot pink singlet (I figure it minimises my chances of getting hit by any of the crazy inaka - country - drivers), the only person with a face that matches their hot pink singlet (it's really really hot, ok!!! I got a toot from a truck driver, but I think it no coincidence that he was behind me and hadn't seen my face lol) and, I believe, the only adult that gets any intentional exercise!! Watching the little old ladies hobbling out to work in the rice paddies I can understand that going for a jog isn't high on their adgenda, but I feel like I should be carrying a sign 'I don't have a rice field so I have to run, ok??'
Oh, I am also freakish because the Japanese women go to any extent to avoid the sun. They wear long-sleeved tops even in this heat, and if they are wearing tshirts, they wear long gloves that meet their tshirt sleeves. Then they wear long pants, a hat, sunscreen and carry a parasol. There are whole stores dedicated just to parasols here. So for a woman to go for a run in the sun wearing shorts and a sleeveless top is an unheard-of (and before you say anything Mum, it was 8:30am, so I didn't get sunburnt!).
Luc, Jeff's Canadian co-worker and the only other non-Japanese in the town, told us only tramps get a tan in Japan. I thought that sounded pretty harsh until, in town, we saw the girls he was talking about. Heavy makeup, sky-high strappy heels, very little clothing and a beautiful tan. I'm not sure how to explain them because, in all honesty, my description doesn't really explain the difference between the trashy Japanese and the stylish Japanese (except for the tan), but the trashy girls here look like NZ hookers. That kind of over-done. Also, these women are so thin its unbelievable. Some of them make me very envious. Many of them freak me out and make me want to get them some KFC.
Ok, that's my wee moan about being the town weirdo. Hopefully if I keep up my new exercise regime (two days so far, lol) they will get used to me and stop staring... In the meantime I'm getting my head round being four times the size of the locals (maybe I exaggerate... five times!). Sometimes they make me feel bad for being so much bigger, but I'm also so much taller it's like comparing a St Bernard and a Chihuahua. So I just don't (much...).
Hope y'all are doing good at the bottom of the world...
Charly's run - aka Free Food
Ok, entry two - exciting stuff! I would like to tell you all about a wee occurrence last week, Monday. An occurrence that left me with warm fuzzies, if not the better off physically...
As you may or may not know, Jeff was away last week on a language camp in some little town that is not Hiroshima (as we originally thought. That he would be there, not that it was little). So I spent the week amusing myself. Not as hard as it sounds - I brought a decent library with me and still have some editing to finish up and email home for Mighty River Power.
However, on Monday night I was feeling all inspired, so I cooked up a big batch of pumpkin and vegetable soup (without the aid of a blender, oven, soup pot or cooking spices!). I wasn't hungry yet, so I decided to be totally saintly and go for a run. Bearing in mind the excessive heat (30 degrees C) and humidity (70%), this was a big big ask.
Anyway, I laced my new running shoes and set out, encouraged by the fact shadow had fallen across the valley, cooling things a bit.
I ran up a little hill, went 'ooh, shit, that's a graveyard!' and back down the hill, along the canal, past the rickety iron 'back door' bridge over said canal, past the garage where they cut the back out to fit their ute, past a couple of old ladies, a surprised-looking bloke and several rows of sunflowers. Here I stopped to stretch and blow my nose in privacy (the Japanese don't blow their noses, so my habit only adds to my curiousity factor!).
Continuing on, I passed a little gas station, a random Japanese store of the 'we sell everything, but we don't sell it very often so don't ask how long those biscuits have been on the shelf' variety and past an apartment style house that got my hopes up about seeing monkeys when I heard the children playing (monkeys, kids, they don't sound that different!). Crossing the main road, I headed down a side street that quickly became, by NZ definitions, a one-way road (so quite wide for the Jinseki 'inaka' - country - roads).
By this point I had been running for 11 minutes, so I thought it was time to turn around and complete my little jog. However, two buildings along, there was a small dog making a ruckus. I slowed down as I passed the shed, curious to see the pooch making all the noise. I saw a small russet-coloured lapdog, barking and straining against its lead, eyes bulging in anger and effort. The leash was held by a Japanese bloke who was one of four men, of varying ages, sitting round a table in white singlets, towels draped around their necks, having cigarettes and snacking on something Japanese—looking (maybe dried squid?).
One of the men made a hand signal which looked like a Western ‘go away’ – and I seemed to recall is a Japanese ‘come here’. I wasn’t sure if I was reading the body language right, so I approached cautiously (much to the delight of the dog who thought he was warding me off).
The bloke who had called me over motioned to his wife while he gave her an instruction and she scuttled off to the corner, returning with a can of cold sweetened coffee. “Atsui desu nee?” the guy asked me, as his wife handed me the cold drink. “Atsui desu nee,” I agreed. Yes, it certainly was hot! Next minute the wife had a wheelie chair under my bum, had handed me a sweat towel (after giggling at my red face!) and I was sitting in their shed with the five of them having my drink.
Every minute or so something in the group tried to attempt conversation with me, limited as we were by their lack of English and my only knowing the Japanese for hot, New Zealand, married and teacher. However, this was sufficient to explain what I was doing in Jinseki and to encourage the group to keep trying to ask me other things, in the hope I would understand a word and be able to decipher the question.
When I finished my drink there was an awkward couple of minutes while I tried to work out if it was rude to (literally) run off as soon as I had finished my drink, or if I was expected to stay and make conversation. The bloke who seemed to own the place solved this for me by sending his wife scuttling off again with another instruction. He turned to me and said, questioningly, “Vegetables?”
“Hai, vegetables oishi!” I answered, “Yes, vegetables delicious!” (in case you wondered, yes, there has been much butchering of the Japanese language over the last few weeks!)
I was handed a bag of vegetables – four tomatoes, four eggplants, two cucumbers and a handful of capsicum, then the wife took my towel and drink can and they all waved me out the door!
I jogged home switching my vegies from one hand to the other as my shoulder got tired from the weight, grinning inanely and yelling ‘Konbanwa!’ at every little old lady I passed.
As you may or may not know, Jeff was away last week on a language camp in some little town that is not Hiroshima (as we originally thought. That he would be there, not that it was little). So I spent the week amusing myself. Not as hard as it sounds - I brought a decent library with me and still have some editing to finish up and email home for Mighty River Power.
However, on Monday night I was feeling all inspired, so I cooked up a big batch of pumpkin and vegetable soup (without the aid of a blender, oven, soup pot or cooking spices!). I wasn't hungry yet, so I decided to be totally saintly and go for a run. Bearing in mind the excessive heat (30 degrees C) and humidity (70%), this was a big big ask.
Anyway, I laced my new running shoes and set out, encouraged by the fact shadow had fallen across the valley, cooling things a bit.
I ran up a little hill, went 'ooh, shit, that's a graveyard!' and back down the hill, along the canal, past the rickety iron 'back door' bridge over said canal, past the garage where they cut the back out to fit their ute, past a couple of old ladies, a surprised-looking bloke and several rows of sunflowers. Here I stopped to stretch and blow my nose in privacy (the Japanese don't blow their noses, so my habit only adds to my curiousity factor!).
Continuing on, I passed a little gas station, a random Japanese store of the 'we sell everything, but we don't sell it very often so don't ask how long those biscuits have been on the shelf' variety and past an apartment style house that got my hopes up about seeing monkeys when I heard the children playing (monkeys, kids, they don't sound that different!). Crossing the main road, I headed down a side street that quickly became, by NZ definitions, a one-way road (so quite wide for the Jinseki 'inaka' - country - roads).
By this point I had been running for 11 minutes, so I thought it was time to turn around and complete my little jog. However, two buildings along, there was a small dog making a ruckus. I slowed down as I passed the shed, curious to see the pooch making all the noise. I saw a small russet-coloured lapdog, barking and straining against its lead, eyes bulging in anger and effort. The leash was held by a Japanese bloke who was one of four men, of varying ages, sitting round a table in white singlets, towels draped around their necks, having cigarettes and snacking on something Japanese—looking (maybe dried squid?).
One of the men made a hand signal which looked like a Western ‘go away’ – and I seemed to recall is a Japanese ‘come here’. I wasn’t sure if I was reading the body language right, so I approached cautiously (much to the delight of the dog who thought he was warding me off).
The bloke who had called me over motioned to his wife while he gave her an instruction and she scuttled off to the corner, returning with a can of cold sweetened coffee. “Atsui desu nee?” the guy asked me, as his wife handed me the cold drink. “Atsui desu nee,” I agreed. Yes, it certainly was hot! Next minute the wife had a wheelie chair under my bum, had handed me a sweat towel (after giggling at my red face!) and I was sitting in their shed with the five of them having my drink.
Every minute or so something in the group tried to attempt conversation with me, limited as we were by their lack of English and my only knowing the Japanese for hot, New Zealand, married and teacher. However, this was sufficient to explain what I was doing in Jinseki and to encourage the group to keep trying to ask me other things, in the hope I would understand a word and be able to decipher the question.
When I finished my drink there was an awkward couple of minutes while I tried to work out if it was rude to (literally) run off as soon as I had finished my drink, or if I was expected to stay and make conversation. The bloke who seemed to own the place solved this for me by sending his wife scuttling off again with another instruction. He turned to me and said, questioningly, “Vegetables?”
“Hai, vegetables oishi!” I answered, “Yes, vegetables delicious!” (in case you wondered, yes, there has been much butchering of the Japanese language over the last few weeks!)
I was handed a bag of vegetables – four tomatoes, four eggplants, two cucumbers and a handful of capsicum, then the wife took my towel and drink can and they all waved me out the door!
I jogged home switching my vegies from one hand to the other as my shoulder got tired from the weight, grinning inanely and yelling ‘Konbanwa!’ at every little old lady I passed.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
First post - Our house
Hey peeps,
Well, for this first post I'm going to cheat and paste a mass email I just sent out to y'all. So if you got the email, it will look familiar - sorry.
However the goal of this blog is to avoid too many mass emails (I never know who wants them and who is annoyed at the inbox clutter!). So for regular updates please check here. I will endeavour to update regularly :)
Hey all,
Ok, so this is the email you have been waiting on the edge of your seats for!! Ok, it’s not actually an email yet, it’s currently a word document because our internet is super intermittent, but it WILL be an email! Fingers crossed!
It is now Saturday morning, on no, wait, 3pm. So very afternoon! Ok, so it is now Saturday afternoon. We have had a super lazy day, reading and eating and not a lot else. As soon as Jeff has a shower we are going to go for a walk around our village and take some photos. It is so cute here, it is a photographer’s dream!
Although we are very rural, we are in the middle of the Jinseki village, with the doctor out front and someone’s garden fence out back. On the right (as you face the house) we are attached to an identical little house and on the left is the parking for a little chemist (currently we don’t have net curtains in the kitchen and I’m sick of the chemist’s patients staring in my kitchen window at the weird gaijin – foreigner – so guess what’s top of my shopping list!).
As for the structure of our village… it’s very hard to describe. Suffice it to say that the city hall is currently in the process of working out our address! If this doesn’t make any sense to you, consider these instructions to our house from the lights a few hundred metres away:
Take the left turn at the lights (not the sharp left, the other left), cross the bridge and immediately turn left before the barber’s pole. Make a right between the tomato plants and the motorbike (or the covered car parks if the bike has moved!) and come up the little hill. The road then splits into two driveway/roads and we are the left one, the first house you come to. If your car is the size of NZ ones, it may not fit in our driveway, so best park further down the road…
Each of the village roads are separated by waterways that vary between ditches and canals. They tend to be twice as deep as they are wide and are affectionately known as ‘gaijin traps’.
Ok, part II, written Monday morning.
Jeff left at 5:30am today for a week-long language camp. After a nice sleep-in I have settled down to finish writing our Japan update. Whether I will succeed in sending it before Jeff gets home is questionable – the internet is so sucky I have stayed clear of it except when Jeff tells me ‘It’s working! Quick, do what you need to do online!’
Ok, I have just put the dishes away. This gives me much happiness, as when we have just put away the clean dishes (and have not yet made any more dirty ones) is the only time we have any bench space, the draining space on the sink being IT. We have taken to using the top of the fridge (thankfully Japanese size, i.e. short) as extra bench space. The top of the microwave is treated as a kitchen shelf, although it may soon also be used as bench space… This lack of space has meant a need for organisation and tidiness that does not come naturally to either of us (although I admit Jeff struggles less with the tidy concept than I do). However, we have to remember that we will come out of this better, tidier people! Or we will start doing food prep on the kitchen floor…
However, the lack of space in the kitchen is one of our only quibbles about our BEAUTIFUL house. I love it so much! Downstairs we have a large kitchen, roughly 4m by 4m, connected to a slightly smaller lounge by traditional sliding doors with oriental-style flowers painted on the bottom. Our lounge has tatami mat floors, traditional wood and pale green walls, a rice paper door to the washing line, a cream couch and a small square table that we eat from while sitting on the floor (well, I sit on the floor. Jeff normally cheats and sits on the couch, although I nag him to practise sitting on the floor so he’s not uncomfortable when we go out to dinner at traditional places. Jeff hasn’t FORBIDDEN me to eat on the couch, but I am strongly discouraged, as my tendency to make a mess with my food doesn’t bode well on a cream couch…). The centre piece of the lounge is a beautiful suspended lamp with carved wooden scenes on each side, depicting unmistakeably-Japanese trees and mountains. Other than these two rooms, our ground floor has a laundry with bathroom sink, a bathroom with large wash area and bath, a separate toilet with eco sink (the water you wash your hands with fills the toilet cistern to be used on the next flush) and an entrance space for shoes (luckily it’s a big space to fit all my shoes ).
Up some steep stairs we have two bedrooms – one with the same décor as the lounge, including sliding paper doors to the hallway and sliding paper doors for ‘curtains’ at the window. We are currently using the other one – wooden floor and cream walls – for our bedroom, as it has two windows. However, as we are sleeping on futon, which require putting away every morning and remaking every night, we can easily move into the tatami room when the weather cools down. We feel a bit weird about calling them ‘bedrooms’, because when we put the futon away, it becomes a bare floor with our bedside lamps, books and other odds and ends in two piles on the floor. I keep threatening that I won’t last long without a bed – putting it away every morning is such a hassle! – but then I see the price of things and I decide I can last a little longer on futon.
I believe everything will get easier when it cools down – including putting futon away. Currently it is so hot here that you wake sweating and just sweat your way through the day. Cold showers provide a brief respite, and if you’re LUCKY you need to drive somewhere so you can get in the car and crank the AC. Probably the worst of it is that the Japanese hardly sweat. As if I didn’t already feel massive and ungainly around them, I’m a red sweaty mess, while they have a mild sheen on them, if that. They even manage to keep makeup on – something I gave up on after one day here!
Ok, this is getting really long, so I’m going to sign off before I get too carried away. For the record, I intend to start a blog – if I can get online – so that you don’t get your inbox filled with long emails that you don’t have time to read. Until then…
Sayonara,
Charly (and Jeff – even though he hasn’t had a chance to see what I’ve written and signed his name to!)
Well, for this first post I'm going to cheat and paste a mass email I just sent out to y'all. So if you got the email, it will look familiar - sorry.
However the goal of this blog is to avoid too many mass emails (I never know who wants them and who is annoyed at the inbox clutter!). So for regular updates please check here. I will endeavour to update regularly :)
Hey all,
Ok, so this is the email you have been waiting on the edge of your seats for!! Ok, it’s not actually an email yet, it’s currently a word document because our internet is super intermittent, but it WILL be an email! Fingers crossed!
It is now Saturday morning, on no, wait, 3pm. So very afternoon! Ok, so it is now Saturday afternoon. We have had a super lazy day, reading and eating and not a lot else. As soon as Jeff has a shower we are going to go for a walk around our village and take some photos. It is so cute here, it is a photographer’s dream!
Although we are very rural, we are in the middle of the Jinseki village, with the doctor out front and someone’s garden fence out back. On the right (as you face the house) we are attached to an identical little house and on the left is the parking for a little chemist (currently we don’t have net curtains in the kitchen and I’m sick of the chemist’s patients staring in my kitchen window at the weird gaijin – foreigner – so guess what’s top of my shopping list!).
As for the structure of our village… it’s very hard to describe. Suffice it to say that the city hall is currently in the process of working out our address! If this doesn’t make any sense to you, consider these instructions to our house from the lights a few hundred metres away:
Take the left turn at the lights (not the sharp left, the other left), cross the bridge and immediately turn left before the barber’s pole. Make a right between the tomato plants and the motorbike (or the covered car parks if the bike has moved!) and come up the little hill. The road then splits into two driveway/roads and we are the left one, the first house you come to. If your car is the size of NZ ones, it may not fit in our driveway, so best park further down the road…
Each of the village roads are separated by waterways that vary between ditches and canals. They tend to be twice as deep as they are wide and are affectionately known as ‘gaijin traps’.
Ok, part II, written Monday morning.
Jeff left at 5:30am today for a week-long language camp. After a nice sleep-in I have settled down to finish writing our Japan update. Whether I will succeed in sending it before Jeff gets home is questionable – the internet is so sucky I have stayed clear of it except when Jeff tells me ‘It’s working! Quick, do what you need to do online!’
Ok, I have just put the dishes away. This gives me much happiness, as when we have just put away the clean dishes (and have not yet made any more dirty ones) is the only time we have any bench space, the draining space on the sink being IT. We have taken to using the top of the fridge (thankfully Japanese size, i.e. short) as extra bench space. The top of the microwave is treated as a kitchen shelf, although it may soon also be used as bench space… This lack of space has meant a need for organisation and tidiness that does not come naturally to either of us (although I admit Jeff struggles less with the tidy concept than I do). However, we have to remember that we will come out of this better, tidier people! Or we will start doing food prep on the kitchen floor…
However, the lack of space in the kitchen is one of our only quibbles about our BEAUTIFUL house. I love it so much! Downstairs we have a large kitchen, roughly 4m by 4m, connected to a slightly smaller lounge by traditional sliding doors with oriental-style flowers painted on the bottom. Our lounge has tatami mat floors, traditional wood and pale green walls, a rice paper door to the washing line, a cream couch and a small square table that we eat from while sitting on the floor (well, I sit on the floor. Jeff normally cheats and sits on the couch, although I nag him to practise sitting on the floor so he’s not uncomfortable when we go out to dinner at traditional places. Jeff hasn’t FORBIDDEN me to eat on the couch, but I am strongly discouraged, as my tendency to make a mess with my food doesn’t bode well on a cream couch…). The centre piece of the lounge is a beautiful suspended lamp with carved wooden scenes on each side, depicting unmistakeably-Japanese trees and mountains. Other than these two rooms, our ground floor has a laundry with bathroom sink, a bathroom with large wash area and bath, a separate toilet with eco sink (the water you wash your hands with fills the toilet cistern to be used on the next flush) and an entrance space for shoes (luckily it’s a big space to fit all my shoes ).
Up some steep stairs we have two bedrooms – one with the same décor as the lounge, including sliding paper doors to the hallway and sliding paper doors for ‘curtains’ at the window. We are currently using the other one – wooden floor and cream walls – for our bedroom, as it has two windows. However, as we are sleeping on futon, which require putting away every morning and remaking every night, we can easily move into the tatami room when the weather cools down. We feel a bit weird about calling them ‘bedrooms’, because when we put the futon away, it becomes a bare floor with our bedside lamps, books and other odds and ends in two piles on the floor. I keep threatening that I won’t last long without a bed – putting it away every morning is such a hassle! – but then I see the price of things and I decide I can last a little longer on futon.
I believe everything will get easier when it cools down – including putting futon away. Currently it is so hot here that you wake sweating and just sweat your way through the day. Cold showers provide a brief respite, and if you’re LUCKY you need to drive somewhere so you can get in the car and crank the AC. Probably the worst of it is that the Japanese hardly sweat. As if I didn’t already feel massive and ungainly around them, I’m a red sweaty mess, while they have a mild sheen on them, if that. They even manage to keep makeup on – something I gave up on after one day here!
Ok, this is getting really long, so I’m going to sign off before I get too carried away. For the record, I intend to start a blog – if I can get online – so that you don’t get your inbox filled with long emails that you don’t have time to read. Until then…
Sayonara,
Charly (and Jeff – even though he hasn’t had a chance to see what I’ve written and signed his name to!)
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