Yikes... Jeff and I are talking about having me reapply for JET in the hopes of getting me a job closer by BUT the application is due end of November and I only just realised how much paperwork is involved - eek!! I had blocked out the painful memories of getting the excess of paperwork done last time we applied, so am having a wee freakout about getting it done in time now!! Am trying to rope in anyone I can to move things along faster - having my little sis fill out forms in NZ to save postage, emailling medical stuff and hoping my referees kept my letter on file!! Please all keep your fingers crossed for me that I can get all this stuff together and shipped back to NZ in time to try to apply again.
After that you can all cross them for me that a job close by comes free and that the Board of Education's description of who they want matches ME. So yes, there is a lot of luck involved in this!!
A nervous Charly
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Yikes, it's COLD.
Hey,
I don't mean to moan about the temperature AGAIN - I've only just stopped complaining about the heat. BUT last night on my drive home it was 4 degrees!! I mean, it's 4 degrees in October and it was still hitting 30 in late September! No wonder it is a massive shock to the system!! I'm sitting on the couch in my PJs and have spent the last two hours urging myself to go do a few weights. However, that involves changing out of my PJ pants into shorts, so so far no go!! (If I work out in my PJs, ok, my merino long johns, then I won't have their warmness to wear to bed tonight, so yes I do have to change) Instead the only time I've got off the couch has been to make more tea...
Had an interesting conversation with my boss the other day which ended up with the decision that one of my sisters would fly over for a couple of weeks to cover for him while he takes a holiday. Currently Beth and Kate are fighting it out to decide who should come. It sounds like Beth has the time but Kate has the money. We will see what happens...
But no wonder I didn't feel like leaving NZ was a big deal - within six months we will have had Kate or Beth, Sandra and Geoff, Trudi, my parents and possibly Laura all visit us!! We moved to Japan and the rest of NZ is following us!!
Oh, yay, the sun has come out. Hopefully that will warm the house a little. This cold is a particuarly big shock because we spent the weekend at my apartment on Mukaishima, which is always several degrees warmer than Jinseki (last night it was 7 degrees there. Once it was 9 in Jinseki and 18 in Onomichi. Sucks to have an uninsulated house in Jinseki!). Jeff stayed down for the weekend, so we could go explore the island where I stay. We drove round the edge, past lots of little ports and old fishing boats and peered at houses that were built with no reference to the fact they were on the sea. While in NZ houses in that situation would be all decks and big sliding doors, here they would abhore the idea of indoor-outdoor flow (outside dirt coming inside... ugh!!) and everything is very shut off, with only a small balcony that you can hang your futon over to air them.
Geography note: I probably haven't explained this previously, but I use Onomichi, Mukaishima and Innoshima fairly interchangeably. In actual fact, Innoshima is where the main school that I work is, Mukaishima is a smaller school that I stay above and occasionally teach in and Onomichi is the main city that I drive through to get to the islands. 'Shima' means island.
Saturday night in Mukaishima was fun. Jeff was supposed to meet a friend in Fukuyama, but it was going to be a really late night and would rely on me being sober driver and driving home pretty late. Here you cannot even have one drink and drive, BUT (or perhaps because of this) non-alcoholic drinks are almost the same price as a beer when you buy them at a bar. None of this 'free drinks for the sober driver' stuff!! So we postponed that plan for a different night and Jeff and I were free to do our own thing. Conveniently my flat in Mukaishima is within walking distance of two supermarkets, a mall of sorts and a number of restaurants (starting with the okinomiyaki place next door - yum!). In fact, not just walking distance, but walking in heels distance. That close. So in celebration I put on my heels (first time I've worn heels in Japan, so it was a big deal!!!) and we walked around the corner to a ramen place. There we had yummy ramen and a pork dish that the guy whipped us up and didn't charge us for - little pieces of pork cooked to perfection with a blow torch. Yum! We even had beer with dinner - BOTH of us!! It was so nice being able to have a beer together at a restaurant - another first for Japan. We then went for a little walk down the street before retiring to my apartment to watch a movie on my laptop and share a bottle of red wine. Yay! So it was a really chilled but enjoyable evening.
That's about all to report, I think. We are trying to figure out the details for our Christmas holiday - and trying to save our pennies so we can afford it. Jeff has been kept busy with speech competitions and helping out with an older people's group for English language practise. The school speeches are funny because the winner of the school speech competition then has the ALT (i.e. Jeff or Luc) write their speech for the regional competion. I wrote a couple of the Jinseki ones this year. So Jeff and I were laughing that it will be my speeches taking on his! (Luc will write some too, but Jinseki or one of Jeff's schools always wins, so it is really just Jeff vs. me!!) Maybe we should bet a massage on it... Hmm... too cold for massages, maybe bet a nice homecooked meal on it :)
Ok, now I REALLY need to lift some weights before getting out of the PJs and going to the supermarket. Hope you are all doing well.
Charly
I don't mean to moan about the temperature AGAIN - I've only just stopped complaining about the heat. BUT last night on my drive home it was 4 degrees!! I mean, it's 4 degrees in October and it was still hitting 30 in late September! No wonder it is a massive shock to the system!! I'm sitting on the couch in my PJs and have spent the last two hours urging myself to go do a few weights. However, that involves changing out of my PJ pants into shorts, so so far no go!! (If I work out in my PJs, ok, my merino long johns, then I won't have their warmness to wear to bed tonight, so yes I do have to change) Instead the only time I've got off the couch has been to make more tea...
Had an interesting conversation with my boss the other day which ended up with the decision that one of my sisters would fly over for a couple of weeks to cover for him while he takes a holiday. Currently Beth and Kate are fighting it out to decide who should come. It sounds like Beth has the time but Kate has the money. We will see what happens...
But no wonder I didn't feel like leaving NZ was a big deal - within six months we will have had Kate or Beth, Sandra and Geoff, Trudi, my parents and possibly Laura all visit us!! We moved to Japan and the rest of NZ is following us!!
Oh, yay, the sun has come out. Hopefully that will warm the house a little. This cold is a particuarly big shock because we spent the weekend at my apartment on Mukaishima, which is always several degrees warmer than Jinseki (last night it was 7 degrees there. Once it was 9 in Jinseki and 18 in Onomichi. Sucks to have an uninsulated house in Jinseki!). Jeff stayed down for the weekend, so we could go explore the island where I stay. We drove round the edge, past lots of little ports and old fishing boats and peered at houses that were built with no reference to the fact they were on the sea. While in NZ houses in that situation would be all decks and big sliding doors, here they would abhore the idea of indoor-outdoor flow (outside dirt coming inside... ugh!!) and everything is very shut off, with only a small balcony that you can hang your futon over to air them.
Geography note: I probably haven't explained this previously, but I use Onomichi, Mukaishima and Innoshima fairly interchangeably. In actual fact, Innoshima is where the main school that I work is, Mukaishima is a smaller school that I stay above and occasionally teach in and Onomichi is the main city that I drive through to get to the islands. 'Shima' means island.
Saturday night in Mukaishima was fun. Jeff was supposed to meet a friend in Fukuyama, but it was going to be a really late night and would rely on me being sober driver and driving home pretty late. Here you cannot even have one drink and drive, BUT (or perhaps because of this) non-alcoholic drinks are almost the same price as a beer when you buy them at a bar. None of this 'free drinks for the sober driver' stuff!! So we postponed that plan for a different night and Jeff and I were free to do our own thing. Conveniently my flat in Mukaishima is within walking distance of two supermarkets, a mall of sorts and a number of restaurants (starting with the okinomiyaki place next door - yum!). In fact, not just walking distance, but walking in heels distance. That close. So in celebration I put on my heels (first time I've worn heels in Japan, so it was a big deal!!!) and we walked around the corner to a ramen place. There we had yummy ramen and a pork dish that the guy whipped us up and didn't charge us for - little pieces of pork cooked to perfection with a blow torch. Yum! We even had beer with dinner - BOTH of us!! It was so nice being able to have a beer together at a restaurant - another first for Japan. We then went for a little walk down the street before retiring to my apartment to watch a movie on my laptop and share a bottle of red wine. Yay! So it was a really chilled but enjoyable evening.
That's about all to report, I think. We are trying to figure out the details for our Christmas holiday - and trying to save our pennies so we can afford it. Jeff has been kept busy with speech competitions and helping out with an older people's group for English language practise. The school speeches are funny because the winner of the school speech competition then has the ALT (i.e. Jeff or Luc) write their speech for the regional competion. I wrote a couple of the Jinseki ones this year. So Jeff and I were laughing that it will be my speeches taking on his! (Luc will write some too, but Jinseki or one of Jeff's schools always wins, so it is really just Jeff vs. me!!) Maybe we should bet a massage on it... Hmm... too cold for massages, maybe bet a nice homecooked meal on it :)
Ok, now I REALLY need to lift some weights before getting out of the PJs and going to the supermarket. Hope you are all doing well.
Charly
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Japanese horses
I'm supposed to be leaving the house in 23 mins and I still need to shower and dress for work, so this is only a quick catchup note.
On Saturday I went horseriding with Emma, an American JET who lives in the next town over. She managed to chance upon a riding stable of sorts - three horses, one of which is pretty chilled to the extent that it is used for riding demonstrations while the rider fires a traditional bow and arrow, one of which is young and green and one which is a little pony. Emma has been riding the green horse a couple of times a week, training it up, so I rode the chilled one. After wandering round the arena for a while as Emma trained up her one, the Japanese bloke who owns them came out, bareback, on the little pony and we were told we were going for a trail ride. He took us on a little ride past a little lake/dam above his rice paddies, past a random little cemetary hidden in the bushes, along a little ridgeline and back down to the stable. It was a short but super cute trail ride! Especially because I was on a ploddy chilled horse following this spry older Japanese man saddle-less on his little pony. I thought my family would have approved!
Sunday we went down to Fukuyama to pick up a couple of things (important things like real coffee and Vegemite!). We got a little bit of Christmas shopping done (trying to be organised early because it's hard to get stuff here that a) you can't get in NZ, b) isn't lots more expensive than NZ and c) is postage-friendly) then headed home in time to catch the vege shop before it closed. The highlight of the day (other than the cute hat I bought!) was dinner - I had been craving something spicey so I made an Indian curry (Japanese do not do spicey, none of their food is hot :( ). The curry was really tasty and we ate far too much of it. But it was so good, and wasn't an expensive meal. I forsee me making it very often!!
Ok, shower time. 13 mins, eek!! Gosh, I'm terrible with time!!!!
Hope you are all well,
Charly
On Saturday I went horseriding with Emma, an American JET who lives in the next town over. She managed to chance upon a riding stable of sorts - three horses, one of which is pretty chilled to the extent that it is used for riding demonstrations while the rider fires a traditional bow and arrow, one of which is young and green and one which is a little pony. Emma has been riding the green horse a couple of times a week, training it up, so I rode the chilled one. After wandering round the arena for a while as Emma trained up her one, the Japanese bloke who owns them came out, bareback, on the little pony and we were told we were going for a trail ride. He took us on a little ride past a little lake/dam above his rice paddies, past a random little cemetary hidden in the bushes, along a little ridgeline and back down to the stable. It was a short but super cute trail ride! Especially because I was on a ploddy chilled horse following this spry older Japanese man saddle-less on his little pony. I thought my family would have approved!
Sunday we went down to Fukuyama to pick up a couple of things (important things like real coffee and Vegemite!). We got a little bit of Christmas shopping done (trying to be organised early because it's hard to get stuff here that a) you can't get in NZ, b) isn't lots more expensive than NZ and c) is postage-friendly) then headed home in time to catch the vege shop before it closed. The highlight of the day (other than the cute hat I bought!) was dinner - I had been craving something spicey so I made an Indian curry (Japanese do not do spicey, none of their food is hot :( ). The curry was really tasty and we ate far too much of it. But it was so good, and wasn't an expensive meal. I forsee me making it very often!!
Ok, shower time. 13 mins, eek!! Gosh, I'm terrible with time!!!!
Hope you are all well,
Charly
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Festivals and sponge cake
Hello there,
Time for your next update... a little overdue really...
Last weekend was a three day weekend. Jeff and I had initially had plans to go away, but we have realised that, as good as Jeff's salary is, all this travel is burning through it pretty fast and we need to save up for our Christmas trip and our travels with our visitors in March/April (we have Geoff & Sandra, Trudi and my parents all visiting within two months! Awesome, but our bank account won't love us for it!). Then we were inundated by invitations to festivals, so we decided to stick local.
On Saturday we had been invited to a festival at the school next door. I was picturing something like an NZ gala day, with stalls to buy things and kids projects to admire. We had a lazy morning, watching Outrageous Fortune and eating Korean pancakes for lunch (yum, thanks Jeff!), then headed over about 2pm, knowing it finished at 3pm. The school was silent, and when I poked my head into the gym, there were heaps and heaps of people in there, sitting in the dark. We started to beat a hasty retreat, but the maths teacher came out and ushered us in. They told us to sit down at the back - as if we could see anything in the complete darkness. They finally navigated us to a couple of chairs, the curtains on stage opened and a play started/continued (no idea which - we don't have enough Japanese to understand what was happening at all!). I, at least, knew the kids, so could watch with the knowledge that I would later be able to tell them how well they did (although, for the record, when you don't speak the language, it's really hard to tell good acting from bad. I mean, the fake laughing was pretty fake, but maybe it was supposed to be like that...??). Jeff, on the other hand, just realised he had an hour of watching a play with kids he didn't know speaking a language he didn't understand, so he scooted out, mumbling something about not feeling well. So that 'festival' wasn't really what we had in mind! Clearly it was more like a school performance.
Sunday we had been told about the Yuki festival. Jeff works in two different schools in Yuki, so felt he should check it out, but then we were fearful it would be the Yuki version of what we had experienced on Saturday in Jinseki. For that reason, we went after lunch, figuring that way we weren't stuck for too long if it wasn't enjoyable. However, this was a totally different experience. We had to follow a track down into the woods to a beautiful little shrine tucked away in the forest. There, the straight road/path to the shrine was lined with cymbol-like drums being beaten by guys in ceremonial jackets. The road itself had taiko drums and drummers filling it. There were four drummers to a drum and they wore amazing costumes - huge elaborate feathered headdresses, crazy orange and yellow jackets and lime green sashes holding everything in place. They beat the drums with something that looked like a small hand weight had sex with a cheerleader's pompom. There was dancing and chanting and drumming. At each end of the drummers was a black two-man dragon, swirling and posing in time to the beat. A man in a blonde wig and mask like a red, angry Pinnochio strode/danced up and down between the drummers. I couldn't help pondering if that was what we (read 'I') looked like to them - some blonde haired, red faced devil, a reference to other cultures trying to invade. I don't know if that's the origin of the costume, but it sure looked like that to me.
We hadn't been there too long when we got asked to come around the back, where they had small shrines, made to be carried by four to eight people. Initially we were dressed in the ceremonial jackets and made to help carrying the childrens one (WAY more difficult than it should have been - trying to carry something while NOT standing on the three year old or the loop of rope he was trailing right in front of my feet). We relinquished that one when it went up for it's ceremonial blessing, feeling like right gits carrying the kiddies shrine. However, one of the men's groups, when they saw Jeff was free, grabbed him to help carry their shrine - assumably feeling a big tall foreigner would find it easy to carry their shrine. However, Jeff was so much taller than the bloke in front of him that the guy was struggling to even look like he was taking any weight. Jeff had the option of taking far more than his 1/8 of the (very heavy!) shrine, or walking with a part squat. In the event, he alternated. I ran alongside taking lots of photos and videos (they should hit facebook soon!) when they carried the shrine from the main building, along the driveway to a little park area where more ceremonial stuff happened (some little girls danced, some old guys in priestly clothes said some stuff in Japanese, there was lots more drumming... by this point I was so hungry my concentration span had totally gone!), then getting Jeff food when he was waiting on taking the shrine back to the other end (yes, I was much better once I had eaten!!).
When they were finally able to take the shrine back, Jeff and I returned our jackets (sadly - I was really hoping to keep mine!!) and wandered home with the crowds - stopping only to buy a banana and chocolate crepe - YUM. All in all it was a really great day. And the bruise on Jeff's shoulder has almost disappeared now...
Monday, being the holiday, we had been invited to a taiko drum festival in Shobara, our closest town and closest proper supermarket. Zac, one of the other JETs was involved in the performance, so we were picking up Emma (another JET) and heading out there. That one was a lot more popular than the previous two festivals - by the time we had bought tickets, paid for parking, driven miles to the carpark, found a park, then walked at least a km to the festival, we totally missed Zac's performance. Luckily we heard it as we walked over, so we could still report that he did great. However, when we got in we found the grounds to be so packed that there was no way we could get close enough to tell which drummer was not Japanese. He could have been in EVERY performance and we wouldn't have been able to tell. After the drummers there was a fireworks display that put NZ ones to shame. It is true, the Japanese do amazing fireworks. Also, this is dorky, but in NZ I spend fireworks displays being worried about all the horses nearby potentially freaking out. So it was nice to not worry about any ponies, for once! Of course, when we were driving out, about 100m down the road Emma pointed and said 'The horses I ride live just down that road'. So much for no horses to freak out!!
Sorry if this seems a little hurried, but I have to get out the door in an hour and half for work and I still need to pack lunch and dinner, shower and pack my stuff for tomorrow. And bring in the laundry and maybe do the dishes. *sigh* The joys of not being the income earner... In all fairness Jeff does heaps round the house, but I feel guilty if he brings home the bacon AND cooks it. And cleans up after. If you know what I mean...
Oh, just realised I never explained the sponge cake thing! Yesterday I went to school at Jinseki chugakko, the school next door. I only intended to stick round for a couple of hours, but Ken (the teacher that organised for me to attend) asked me to stay another couple of hours, as he had organised an interesting class for me. Fearing that 'interesting' meant another two hour koto lesson (I do NOT have the patience to play the Japanese harp!! I think you just play the same piece again and again until you remember it... boring!!), I said yes anyway. However, it turned out he had organised for me to join in the cooking class. They were making sponge roll - a cake that the Japanese are particuarly into and you can buy at any conveni (like a dairy). I was really excited, thinking I was going to learn how to make a sweet treat without an oven (Japanese kitchens only have the gas stove top and a microwave). However, it turned out that what I mistook for large microwaves were actually electric ovens. So we made a cake that none of the kids would be able to reproduce at home... Not so useful! However, it turns out that the pride of taking home a piece of the baking you did at school doesn't diminish with age (or at least it doesn't if your cooking ability is as poor as mine!), so I was crazy proud of my battered, squished-looking piece of sponge roll that I took home for Jeff!
Next week doughnuts... might have to make it to school again next week!!
Hope this finds you all well...
Charly
Time for your next update... a little overdue really...
Last weekend was a three day weekend. Jeff and I had initially had plans to go away, but we have realised that, as good as Jeff's salary is, all this travel is burning through it pretty fast and we need to save up for our Christmas trip and our travels with our visitors in March/April (we have Geoff & Sandra, Trudi and my parents all visiting within two months! Awesome, but our bank account won't love us for it!). Then we were inundated by invitations to festivals, so we decided to stick local.
On Saturday we had been invited to a festival at the school next door. I was picturing something like an NZ gala day, with stalls to buy things and kids projects to admire. We had a lazy morning, watching Outrageous Fortune and eating Korean pancakes for lunch (yum, thanks Jeff!), then headed over about 2pm, knowing it finished at 3pm. The school was silent, and when I poked my head into the gym, there were heaps and heaps of people in there, sitting in the dark. We started to beat a hasty retreat, but the maths teacher came out and ushered us in. They told us to sit down at the back - as if we could see anything in the complete darkness. They finally navigated us to a couple of chairs, the curtains on stage opened and a play started/continued (no idea which - we don't have enough Japanese to understand what was happening at all!). I, at least, knew the kids, so could watch with the knowledge that I would later be able to tell them how well they did (although, for the record, when you don't speak the language, it's really hard to tell good acting from bad. I mean, the fake laughing was pretty fake, but maybe it was supposed to be like that...??). Jeff, on the other hand, just realised he had an hour of watching a play with kids he didn't know speaking a language he didn't understand, so he scooted out, mumbling something about not feeling well. So that 'festival' wasn't really what we had in mind! Clearly it was more like a school performance.
Sunday we had been told about the Yuki festival. Jeff works in two different schools in Yuki, so felt he should check it out, but then we were fearful it would be the Yuki version of what we had experienced on Saturday in Jinseki. For that reason, we went after lunch, figuring that way we weren't stuck for too long if it wasn't enjoyable. However, this was a totally different experience. We had to follow a track down into the woods to a beautiful little shrine tucked away in the forest. There, the straight road/path to the shrine was lined with cymbol-like drums being beaten by guys in ceremonial jackets. The road itself had taiko drums and drummers filling it. There were four drummers to a drum and they wore amazing costumes - huge elaborate feathered headdresses, crazy orange and yellow jackets and lime green sashes holding everything in place. They beat the drums with something that looked like a small hand weight had sex with a cheerleader's pompom. There was dancing and chanting and drumming. At each end of the drummers was a black two-man dragon, swirling and posing in time to the beat. A man in a blonde wig and mask like a red, angry Pinnochio strode/danced up and down between the drummers. I couldn't help pondering if that was what we (read 'I') looked like to them - some blonde haired, red faced devil, a reference to other cultures trying to invade. I don't know if that's the origin of the costume, but it sure looked like that to me.
We hadn't been there too long when we got asked to come around the back, where they had small shrines, made to be carried by four to eight people. Initially we were dressed in the ceremonial jackets and made to help carrying the childrens one (WAY more difficult than it should have been - trying to carry something while NOT standing on the three year old or the loop of rope he was trailing right in front of my feet). We relinquished that one when it went up for it's ceremonial blessing, feeling like right gits carrying the kiddies shrine. However, one of the men's groups, when they saw Jeff was free, grabbed him to help carry their shrine - assumably feeling a big tall foreigner would find it easy to carry their shrine. However, Jeff was so much taller than the bloke in front of him that the guy was struggling to even look like he was taking any weight. Jeff had the option of taking far more than his 1/8 of the (very heavy!) shrine, or walking with a part squat. In the event, he alternated. I ran alongside taking lots of photos and videos (they should hit facebook soon!) when they carried the shrine from the main building, along the driveway to a little park area where more ceremonial stuff happened (some little girls danced, some old guys in priestly clothes said some stuff in Japanese, there was lots more drumming... by this point I was so hungry my concentration span had totally gone!), then getting Jeff food when he was waiting on taking the shrine back to the other end (yes, I was much better once I had eaten!!).
When they were finally able to take the shrine back, Jeff and I returned our jackets (sadly - I was really hoping to keep mine!!) and wandered home with the crowds - stopping only to buy a banana and chocolate crepe - YUM. All in all it was a really great day. And the bruise on Jeff's shoulder has almost disappeared now...
Monday, being the holiday, we had been invited to a taiko drum festival in Shobara, our closest town and closest proper supermarket. Zac, one of the other JETs was involved in the performance, so we were picking up Emma (another JET) and heading out there. That one was a lot more popular than the previous two festivals - by the time we had bought tickets, paid for parking, driven miles to the carpark, found a park, then walked at least a km to the festival, we totally missed Zac's performance. Luckily we heard it as we walked over, so we could still report that he did great. However, when we got in we found the grounds to be so packed that there was no way we could get close enough to tell which drummer was not Japanese. He could have been in EVERY performance and we wouldn't have been able to tell. After the drummers there was a fireworks display that put NZ ones to shame. It is true, the Japanese do amazing fireworks. Also, this is dorky, but in NZ I spend fireworks displays being worried about all the horses nearby potentially freaking out. So it was nice to not worry about any ponies, for once! Of course, when we were driving out, about 100m down the road Emma pointed and said 'The horses I ride live just down that road'. So much for no horses to freak out!!
Sorry if this seems a little hurried, but I have to get out the door in an hour and half for work and I still need to pack lunch and dinner, shower and pack my stuff for tomorrow. And bring in the laundry and maybe do the dishes. *sigh* The joys of not being the income earner... In all fairness Jeff does heaps round the house, but I feel guilty if he brings home the bacon AND cooks it. And cleans up after. If you know what I mean...
Oh, just realised I never explained the sponge cake thing! Yesterday I went to school at Jinseki chugakko, the school next door. I only intended to stick round for a couple of hours, but Ken (the teacher that organised for me to attend) asked me to stay another couple of hours, as he had organised an interesting class for me. Fearing that 'interesting' meant another two hour koto lesson (I do NOT have the patience to play the Japanese harp!! I think you just play the same piece again and again until you remember it... boring!!), I said yes anyway. However, it turned out he had organised for me to join in the cooking class. They were making sponge roll - a cake that the Japanese are particuarly into and you can buy at any conveni (like a dairy). I was really excited, thinking I was going to learn how to make a sweet treat without an oven (Japanese kitchens only have the gas stove top and a microwave). However, it turned out that what I mistook for large microwaves were actually electric ovens. So we made a cake that none of the kids would be able to reproduce at home... Not so useful! However, it turns out that the pride of taking home a piece of the baking you did at school doesn't diminish with age (or at least it doesn't if your cooking ability is as poor as mine!), so I was crazy proud of my battered, squished-looking piece of sponge roll that I took home for Jeff!
Next week doughnuts... might have to make it to school again next week!!
Hope this finds you all well...
Charly
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
White water rafting Part II
Hey, so part II of our rafting adventures:
Just before lunch we successfully navigated a rapid (yay! This was rare!) and our guide offered that we could 'surf' it if we wanted. This involved paddling upstream until your boat was under the waterfall which would a) sometimes get you stuck there, b) get you all very wet (see the facebook photos if you doubt this... It's the ones where most of the boat is submerged) and c) potentially - if badly managed - flip your boat.
Ok, so being smart cookies, you can all see what is coming now, right?
Yes, we paddled on in and the force of the water caught us, pushing the front of the boat under (where I was, incidentally. Who needs to breath, right??). The force of the water then pushed our boat sideways, so the left side was being pushed under by the pummelling of the water. Our guide yelled to lean right, so we all transferred our weight to the right side of the boat. But it was too little too late. The force of the water flipped the whole boat over, spilling everyone into the broiling water.
My big fear with white water rafting had always been to get tipped out and come up under the boat. Now, though, I was strangely calm. Perhaps it was because I had the most experience out of everyone on our boat (most were newbies. Jeff was very rude about some of the paddling!!) or perhaps it was because of the millions of times in my childhood that I had been told how to survive a rip. As I came up I realised I was under Alex, who had been at the front of the boat with me, and above her I felt the boat. Instead of fighting for the surface and ending up under the boat (which a number of people did), I let the current take me further downstream until I popped up by one of the other boats, who fished me out. I was noticeably the only one who travelled that far downstream before being put back in a boat. Something which didn't really concern me, decked out as I was in my sexy mustard fleece, wetsuit with holes in the crotch, battered-looking helmet and 'Happy Raft' logoed lifejacket. Come on, when you're kitted out like that you can take on the world!!
So, by this point we had all definitively earnt our lunch break (and, more importantly, our toilet break!!) and we enjoyed the opportunity to eat chicken and salad bagels, drink warm tea and queue for the smelly portaloos!
After lunch, we were refreshed, recharged and ready to go. If a little more cautious-feeling than in the morning...
The afternoon was pretty similar to the morning - you know, a river, boats, water and rocks to get stuck on. And stuck on rocks we got. Again and again. Finally, we were approaching another rapid, when we took a wrong angle and glanced off a rock on the side. This deflected us into another rock, which sent us ricochetting into a large low-lying rock in the centre of the rapid. Time slowed down as we were stuck at the top of the rapid, the water slowly pivotting the boat until, as we faced backwards, the water pushed us free and down the rapid.
As we fell, the front of the boat flicked up, sending Sarah and I caterpaulting out. As Sarah went, she fell across Jeff, bending his oar across his knee. In case you can't picture this, here is the mean action shot (if you look at this picture on facebook you will find that I am tagged in the white water to the right of the boat):
After bumping off a few rocks I popped up close to our boat and with a couple of swim strokes was able to hang on. I went down a few smaller drops hanging on to the outside of the boat, with Jeff trying to haul me in and me trying to not get hauled in for fear of getting squished between an underwater rock and the boat. I figured I was safer doing my own thing, amply protected by my lifejacket, wetsuit and helmet. However, the guides were bellowing at Jeff to get me in, so despite my protesting, Jeff grabbed me by the lifejacket and dragged me into the boat. Just in time to go down the last large drop on that run of rapids, with Jeff lying on the bottom of the boat and me hunkered down, spider-like over him, trying to hang onto any ropes I could reach.
As we pulled over at the bottom, I was protesting that I was fine and that I didn't see the danger in letting me stay outside the boat until we reached a calm bit. However, as I was explaining this, other boats were negotiating the rapids. We heard a shout of alarm - a small Japanese girl had fallen out of her raft. As we watched, she was rushed by the water, just ahead of the boat. There was a few metres of clear water, then the brunt of the current pushed the river into a big rounded stone, sticking a metre or two out of the water. We watched in open-mouthed horror as the current pushed her towards the stone, the boat only a foot or so behind her. With centimetres to spare her guide managed to hook onto her lifejacket and pull her into the boat, only seconds before the boat would have slammed her against the rock.
"Oh," I said. "That's what can go wrong..."
If you are a concerned or attentive person, you may be wondering by now what happened to Sarah while my lovely husband (the only one capable of pulling people into the boat properly) was busy saving me. When I first managed to reach the boat, Sarah had been a couple of metres behind me. I tried to grap onto a paddle, hoping she would grab the other end, but we were both too dazed to manage that. As the boat and I were swept further away, another boat threw a safety rope out to Sarah, so they could haul her to safety. As she was getting towed back in, congratulating herself on remembering how to grab the safety rope correctly, she glanced upstream in time to see her oar coming straight for her, and the hard end smack straight into her forehead. BAD LUCK!! The good news is Sarah's lump on her forehead was the worst of the injuries and we were able to put our boat back together with everyone in one piece.
After this, we managed to stay in the boat except for when we chose to get out to swim or leap off big rocks (ok, in my case, get pushed off big rocks because I was too wussy to jump! I was hoping the people below wouldn't hear me ask the guide to push me, but when I climbed back into the boat Jeff was pissing himself laughing at me!! Bugger!). In fact, once we got all the big rapids out the way, our guide even got up the confidence to put us in some crazy positions going down the rapids.
The most notable of these would have been when Alex, Jeff and I were kneeling at the front, top halves hanging over the front of the boat. My heart was in my mouth when we got caught on a rock (you never would have picked that, right??) and the boat started leaning downwards on an angle, making my head the closest thing to the water. By that point I was cold and tired and stiff and really didn't feel up to another crazy fall. If the boat flipped, my head would be the first thing under, so God knows how many people I would have had land on me. Luckily, we got free of the rock and rode the rapids up the right way, landing with everyone in the boat.
We then did rapids standing up in the boat, lying sideways in the boat, and facing backwards (one of the scarier ones, as I could see the tension in our guide's face! Note: Sorry if I told you about that one already in Part I, I left too long between these!). Some of the other boats offloaded so their occupants could go down some rapids without the boat, but by that point the people in our raft were looking cold and exhausted. There is only so much adrenaline you can take in one day!!
Later, sipping hot tea in dry clothes, I was chatting to one of the guys from a different boat. He confessed to being a little jealous of us, saying his guide was so competant it made everything look easy. They had told him the big rapid was 'nothing', but as they watched our boat approach, bouncing off rocks and getting stuck at the top of the waterfall, his guide said 'It's not nothing if you do it like that!' and winced as we slithered down, losing two occupants. "Your boat looked more exciting!" he said. Yes, that was a very accurate observation. Terrifying, heart-attack-inducing, exhausting, exciting... same diff, right?
Cheers,
Charly
P.S. Sarah says she had a good time, but I doubt she will ever go rafting again.
Just before lunch we successfully navigated a rapid (yay! This was rare!) and our guide offered that we could 'surf' it if we wanted. This involved paddling upstream until your boat was under the waterfall which would a) sometimes get you stuck there, b) get you all very wet (see the facebook photos if you doubt this... It's the ones where most of the boat is submerged) and c) potentially - if badly managed - flip your boat.
Ok, so being smart cookies, you can all see what is coming now, right?
Yes, we paddled on in and the force of the water caught us, pushing the front of the boat under (where I was, incidentally. Who needs to breath, right??). The force of the water then pushed our boat sideways, so the left side was being pushed under by the pummelling of the water. Our guide yelled to lean right, so we all transferred our weight to the right side of the boat. But it was too little too late. The force of the water flipped the whole boat over, spilling everyone into the broiling water.
My big fear with white water rafting had always been to get tipped out and come up under the boat. Now, though, I was strangely calm. Perhaps it was because I had the most experience out of everyone on our boat (most were newbies. Jeff was very rude about some of the paddling!!) or perhaps it was because of the millions of times in my childhood that I had been told how to survive a rip. As I came up I realised I was under Alex, who had been at the front of the boat with me, and above her I felt the boat. Instead of fighting for the surface and ending up under the boat (which a number of people did), I let the current take me further downstream until I popped up by one of the other boats, who fished me out. I was noticeably the only one who travelled that far downstream before being put back in a boat. Something which didn't really concern me, decked out as I was in my sexy mustard fleece, wetsuit with holes in the crotch, battered-looking helmet and 'Happy Raft' logoed lifejacket. Come on, when you're kitted out like that you can take on the world!!
So, by this point we had all definitively earnt our lunch break (and, more importantly, our toilet break!!) and we enjoyed the opportunity to eat chicken and salad bagels, drink warm tea and queue for the smelly portaloos!
After lunch, we were refreshed, recharged and ready to go. If a little more cautious-feeling than in the morning...
The afternoon was pretty similar to the morning - you know, a river, boats, water and rocks to get stuck on. And stuck on rocks we got. Again and again. Finally, we were approaching another rapid, when we took a wrong angle and glanced off a rock on the side. This deflected us into another rock, which sent us ricochetting into a large low-lying rock in the centre of the rapid. Time slowed down as we were stuck at the top of the rapid, the water slowly pivotting the boat until, as we faced backwards, the water pushed us free and down the rapid.
 |
| A novel way to do the rapids... |
 |
| Sarah - yellow helmet - bending Jeff's paddle as she falls across him - black helmet. I am long gone... |
As we pulled over at the bottom, I was protesting that I was fine and that I didn't see the danger in letting me stay outside the boat until we reached a calm bit. However, as I was explaining this, other boats were negotiating the rapids. We heard a shout of alarm - a small Japanese girl had fallen out of her raft. As we watched, she was rushed by the water, just ahead of the boat. There was a few metres of clear water, then the brunt of the current pushed the river into a big rounded stone, sticking a metre or two out of the water. We watched in open-mouthed horror as the current pushed her towards the stone, the boat only a foot or so behind her. With centimetres to spare her guide managed to hook onto her lifejacket and pull her into the boat, only seconds before the boat would have slammed her against the rock.
"Oh," I said. "That's what can go wrong..."
If you are a concerned or attentive person, you may be wondering by now what happened to Sarah while my lovely husband (the only one capable of pulling people into the boat properly) was busy saving me. When I first managed to reach the boat, Sarah had been a couple of metres behind me. I tried to grap onto a paddle, hoping she would grab the other end, but we were both too dazed to manage that. As the boat and I were swept further away, another boat threw a safety rope out to Sarah, so they could haul her to safety. As she was getting towed back in, congratulating herself on remembering how to grab the safety rope correctly, she glanced upstream in time to see her oar coming straight for her, and the hard end smack straight into her forehead. BAD LUCK!! The good news is Sarah's lump on her forehead was the worst of the injuries and we were able to put our boat back together with everyone in one piece.
After this, we managed to stay in the boat except for when we chose to get out to swim or leap off big rocks (ok, in my case, get pushed off big rocks because I was too wussy to jump! I was hoping the people below wouldn't hear me ask the guide to push me, but when I climbed back into the boat Jeff was pissing himself laughing at me!! Bugger!). In fact, once we got all the big rapids out the way, our guide even got up the confidence to put us in some crazy positions going down the rapids.
The most notable of these would have been when Alex, Jeff and I were kneeling at the front, top halves hanging over the front of the boat. My heart was in my mouth when we got caught on a rock (you never would have picked that, right??) and the boat started leaning downwards on an angle, making my head the closest thing to the water. By that point I was cold and tired and stiff and really didn't feel up to another crazy fall. If the boat flipped, my head would be the first thing under, so God knows how many people I would have had land on me. Luckily, we got free of the rock and rode the rapids up the right way, landing with everyone in the boat.
We then did rapids standing up in the boat, lying sideways in the boat, and facing backwards (one of the scarier ones, as I could see the tension in our guide's face! Note: Sorry if I told you about that one already in Part I, I left too long between these!). Some of the other boats offloaded so their occupants could go down some rapids without the boat, but by that point the people in our raft were looking cold and exhausted. There is only so much adrenaline you can take in one day!!
Later, sipping hot tea in dry clothes, I was chatting to one of the guys from a different boat. He confessed to being a little jealous of us, saying his guide was so competant it made everything look easy. They had told him the big rapid was 'nothing', but as they watched our boat approach, bouncing off rocks and getting stuck at the top of the waterfall, his guide said 'It's not nothing if you do it like that!' and winced as we slithered down, losing two occupants. "Your boat looked more exciting!" he said. Yes, that was a very accurate observation. Terrifying, heart-attack-inducing, exhausting, exciting... same diff, right?
Cheers,
Charly
P.S. Sarah says she had a good time, but I doubt she will ever go rafting again.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Looking death in the eye, aka White Water Rafting Part I
Morning people,
Before I kick this one off (I fear I will have a LOT to say...) and forget I wanted to tell you: this morning I went for a little run (cannot overemphasise the 'little' part...) and saw a SNAKE run over on the road. It was maybe 30cm, maybe a little more. Flat enough that I could look at the scales, not so deaded that it was just a flat dry thing. If I had a camera on me I would have taken a pic - because you KNOW you want to see a flat, dead snake!
Ok, so to the big one: white water rafting!!
Friday night Jeff and I headed down to Fukuyama, where we met the bus of JETs bound for Shikoku Island (I'm skipping a big bit there so I don't bore you to death. In a few words, 1.5 hr drive to Fukuyama, met Gabrielle at supermarket so she could show us the way back to her house, drove to her place, ran from her place to closest bus stop, 20min bus to Fukuyama station, used station toilet - grossest, smelliest squat toilet with no paper, found place where JET bus was picking us up from, waited for half hour while the bus was late, THEN met the bus of JETs!). I was a little overwhelmed at first, as the bus was already pretty full of JETs from Hiroshima, who were a) excited and b) had been drinking. They all knew Jeff and were politely enthusiastic about meeting me (read between the lines when 'politely enthusiastic' coincides with 'drinking'). But after the bus started and everyone was made to sit down so the bus driver didn't get pulled over by the cops, I had a chance to chat to some of the people Jeff had made friends with. That was good, being able to put faces to names.
I know I'm probably stupid for being surprised (again and again) at this, but it always impresses me how every time Jeff says he really likes someone or really got along with someone, that I find them really cool too. I mean, even with best friends there are inevitably SOME people you disagree on. But Jeff's judgement seems to strongly coincide with mine (though mine are inevitably expressed much stronger, while Jeff is more willing to give someone a chance when I think they are a git). So I enjoyed meeting the people he had hung out with at language camp.
Anyway, that night we drove about an hour and a half, maybe two, crossing the bridge to Shikoku Island (one of the big four, kind of South-east of the main island, Honshu). We stayed the night in a traditional hotel, a ryokan (hope I spelt that right!), where we stayed on tatami mats with futons. There were two of us couples sharing a room, which was slightly odd, but good because we didn't have to worry about a raging party in our room (he was a fairly quiet American guy who spoke a bit of Japanese, she was a quiet Japanese girl who spoke a bit of English. Fascinating, having a relationship where there is no language they are both fluent in. Or maybe that's a recipe for success - at least from the guy's point of view!).
We spent AGES that evening wandering round the streets in search of a conveni - stupidly we let a drunk guy look at the map initially. Finally when it was clear we weren't getting anywhere useful our Japanese roommate took the map and directed us to the conveni. Luckily it was a nice night for walking, because we had walked in a big circle to find the conveni when it was pretty much straight down the road from our accomodation!! Stupid drunk gaijins. After getting a couple of drinks and some midnight snacks we went back to one of the other rooms to be sociable. About 1am I decided there were too many fart jokes and Gregg was getting more nude than I was comfortable with, so I took off back to our room and not long after the rest of our room followed. Sleepy time!!
6:40am we started our day with a traditional Japanese breakfast. I hadn't had one of those before, and to be honest, I wouldn't rush to have one again. I don't remember EVERYTHING served, but will try to list what I remember: half raw egg served in some kind of broth, a fish steak, several types of pickled vegies, some kind of sweet bean, rice, miso soup, green tea, seaweed, salad (lettuce, tomato, ham and salad dressing), and more pickled THINGS (nope, no idea what!). I admit I am rather pedantic about breakfast, and NEED to start my day with a balanced nutritious feed - usually porridge or muesli with fruit and yoghurt, although occasionally I have toast with - you guessed it - fruit and yoghurt. So we all felt a bit out of kilter starting the day with such an odd assortment of food. At least I had managed to eat all mine - many others, Jeff included, couldn't stomach that food at that time of the morning and consequently were really hungry by the start of rafting.
Yes, the rafting. I'm getting there. After another hour and a half bus ride we all piled off at Happy Raft. There a Nelson boy gave us our forms and explained things, a bloke in the biggest pounamu ever got us into our wetsuits and a bloke who - according to all the Americans - looked like the Dad in Boy gave us the safety talk. The four of us Kiwis on the trip were cracking up - we come to Japan to go rafting and it's all Kiwis!!
However, when we got put on our boat we got an Australian guide - they cleverly have plenty of guides, so foreigners get an English-speaking guide (well, Australian is close to English :P) and Japanese customers got a Japanese guide. I guess for safety reasons you don't want to go down rapids unable to understand what your guide is telling you!
There were two notable things about our boat: we had Sarah, a physically timid English woman who only came because Jeff peer-pressured her into it and she was TERRIFIED. And for our guide we had 'Milky' - and we were his first ever boatload of customers to take down the river. I think you could safely say he was also terrified. So, as you can imagine, not a great combination!!
We started our day by plunging into the water while we were waiting on the boats - we were SO hot in our wetsuits, fleeces and helmets in the hot sun!! So we were all wet before we even got into the boats :) Back at base everyone had been complaining about wearing wetsuits and 'do we have to wear fleeces?' I kept telling them that I'm sure the guides knew what they were doing recommending we wear them, and that five hours on the river, wet, especially if we were in the shade, was a LONG time and they would get cold. Sure enough, as soon as everyone plunged into the river their eyes widened with the shock of the cold water and there were no further complaints about wetsuits or the ugly mustard fleeces!
As we set off down the river our guide taught us the basic commands - paddle forwards, paddle backwards, stop, lean left, lean right, hang on and get in. We also had safety talks about what happens if your boat flips or if someone falls out and needs the safety rope (turns out we needed all that info!). I was pretty laid back about the whole affair - having done the 7m waterfall in Rotorua, I expected the day to be fun, but not scary. How wrong was I!
The morning was pretty calm most of the time, with fairly small rapids warming us into it. There were LOADS of other boats out, so you were safe in the knowledge someone would fish you out quickly if you fell. In fact, our company had at least six boats go out at once and apparently there are TWENTY different companies running tours on the river, with no coordination between them as to who goes when. So before every rapid there were actually traffic jams, and we would have to pull up to the side and wait our turn!
Perhaps the scariest bit was when our guide made us turn around, hunker down and face backwards while we went down a particular rapid. As we went down, I could see the tension and fear on 'Milky's face - probably the scariest moment up till then! Sitting at the front of the boat, it had never occurred to me I wasn't in confident, capable hands!!
Then, just before lunch, it happened.
Oops, sorry, out of time! Will have to finish this tomorrow. Watch this space!!
Before I kick this one off (I fear I will have a LOT to say...) and forget I wanted to tell you: this morning I went for a little run (cannot overemphasise the 'little' part...) and saw a SNAKE run over on the road. It was maybe 30cm, maybe a little more. Flat enough that I could look at the scales, not so deaded that it was just a flat dry thing. If I had a camera on me I would have taken a pic - because you KNOW you want to see a flat, dead snake!
Ok, so to the big one: white water rafting!!
Friday night Jeff and I headed down to Fukuyama, where we met the bus of JETs bound for Shikoku Island (I'm skipping a big bit there so I don't bore you to death. In a few words, 1.5 hr drive to Fukuyama, met Gabrielle at supermarket so she could show us the way back to her house, drove to her place, ran from her place to closest bus stop, 20min bus to Fukuyama station, used station toilet - grossest, smelliest squat toilet with no paper, found place where JET bus was picking us up from, waited for half hour while the bus was late, THEN met the bus of JETs!). I was a little overwhelmed at first, as the bus was already pretty full of JETs from Hiroshima, who were a) excited and b) had been drinking. They all knew Jeff and were politely enthusiastic about meeting me (read between the lines when 'politely enthusiastic' coincides with 'drinking'). But after the bus started and everyone was made to sit down so the bus driver didn't get pulled over by the cops, I had a chance to chat to some of the people Jeff had made friends with. That was good, being able to put faces to names.
I know I'm probably stupid for being surprised (again and again) at this, but it always impresses me how every time Jeff says he really likes someone or really got along with someone, that I find them really cool too. I mean, even with best friends there are inevitably SOME people you disagree on. But Jeff's judgement seems to strongly coincide with mine (though mine are inevitably expressed much stronger, while Jeff is more willing to give someone a chance when I think they are a git). So I enjoyed meeting the people he had hung out with at language camp.
Anyway, that night we drove about an hour and a half, maybe two, crossing the bridge to Shikoku Island (one of the big four, kind of South-east of the main island, Honshu). We stayed the night in a traditional hotel, a ryokan (hope I spelt that right!), where we stayed on tatami mats with futons. There were two of us couples sharing a room, which was slightly odd, but good because we didn't have to worry about a raging party in our room (he was a fairly quiet American guy who spoke a bit of Japanese, she was a quiet Japanese girl who spoke a bit of English. Fascinating, having a relationship where there is no language they are both fluent in. Or maybe that's a recipe for success - at least from the guy's point of view!).
We spent AGES that evening wandering round the streets in search of a conveni - stupidly we let a drunk guy look at the map initially. Finally when it was clear we weren't getting anywhere useful our Japanese roommate took the map and directed us to the conveni. Luckily it was a nice night for walking, because we had walked in a big circle to find the conveni when it was pretty much straight down the road from our accomodation!! Stupid drunk gaijins. After getting a couple of drinks and some midnight snacks we went back to one of the other rooms to be sociable. About 1am I decided there were too many fart jokes and Gregg was getting more nude than I was comfortable with, so I took off back to our room and not long after the rest of our room followed. Sleepy time!!
6:40am we started our day with a traditional Japanese breakfast. I hadn't had one of those before, and to be honest, I wouldn't rush to have one again. I don't remember EVERYTHING served, but will try to list what I remember: half raw egg served in some kind of broth, a fish steak, several types of pickled vegies, some kind of sweet bean, rice, miso soup, green tea, seaweed, salad (lettuce, tomato, ham and salad dressing), and more pickled THINGS (nope, no idea what!). I admit I am rather pedantic about breakfast, and NEED to start my day with a balanced nutritious feed - usually porridge or muesli with fruit and yoghurt, although occasionally I have toast with - you guessed it - fruit and yoghurt. So we all felt a bit out of kilter starting the day with such an odd assortment of food. At least I had managed to eat all mine - many others, Jeff included, couldn't stomach that food at that time of the morning and consequently were really hungry by the start of rafting.
Yes, the rafting. I'm getting there. After another hour and a half bus ride we all piled off at Happy Raft. There a Nelson boy gave us our forms and explained things, a bloke in the biggest pounamu ever got us into our wetsuits and a bloke who - according to all the Americans - looked like the Dad in Boy gave us the safety talk. The four of us Kiwis on the trip were cracking up - we come to Japan to go rafting and it's all Kiwis!!
However, when we got put on our boat we got an Australian guide - they cleverly have plenty of guides, so foreigners get an English-speaking guide (well, Australian is close to English :P) and Japanese customers got a Japanese guide. I guess for safety reasons you don't want to go down rapids unable to understand what your guide is telling you!
There were two notable things about our boat: we had Sarah, a physically timid English woman who only came because Jeff peer-pressured her into it and she was TERRIFIED. And for our guide we had 'Milky' - and we were his first ever boatload of customers to take down the river. I think you could safely say he was also terrified. So, as you can imagine, not a great combination!!
We started our day by plunging into the water while we were waiting on the boats - we were SO hot in our wetsuits, fleeces and helmets in the hot sun!! So we were all wet before we even got into the boats :) Back at base everyone had been complaining about wearing wetsuits and 'do we have to wear fleeces?' I kept telling them that I'm sure the guides knew what they were doing recommending we wear them, and that five hours on the river, wet, especially if we were in the shade, was a LONG time and they would get cold. Sure enough, as soon as everyone plunged into the river their eyes widened with the shock of the cold water and there were no further complaints about wetsuits or the ugly mustard fleeces!
As we set off down the river our guide taught us the basic commands - paddle forwards, paddle backwards, stop, lean left, lean right, hang on and get in. We also had safety talks about what happens if your boat flips or if someone falls out and needs the safety rope (turns out we needed all that info!). I was pretty laid back about the whole affair - having done the 7m waterfall in Rotorua, I expected the day to be fun, but not scary. How wrong was I!
The morning was pretty calm most of the time, with fairly small rapids warming us into it. There were LOADS of other boats out, so you were safe in the knowledge someone would fish you out quickly if you fell. In fact, our company had at least six boats go out at once and apparently there are TWENTY different companies running tours on the river, with no coordination between them as to who goes when. So before every rapid there were actually traffic jams, and we would have to pull up to the side and wait our turn!
Perhaps the scariest bit was when our guide made us turn around, hunker down and face backwards while we went down a particular rapid. As we went down, I could see the tension and fear on 'Milky's face - probably the scariest moment up till then! Sitting at the front of the boat, it had never occurred to me I wasn't in confident, capable hands!!
Then, just before lunch, it happened.
Oops, sorry, out of time! Will have to finish this tomorrow. Watch this space!!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
It got CHILLY
Hi people,
Sorry I've been slack about updating this!
On the temperature front (do you notice a theme to my updates??), yesterday we passed a sign that said it was 14 degrees. Jeff pointed out this meant the temperature has dropped 10 degrees in a week! No wonder we are feeling the difference! While it is now a LOVELY temperature during the day - tshirts and long pants type weather - the nights are not so ideal.
When it was really hot we bought 'summer sheets' - like a really light single duvet, so you have one each. They provide a little more warmth than a couple of sheets and are easy to throw off or pull on as the temperature changes. They are pretty small, so Jeff's feet hang out the end - not that this is an issue in 30 degree heat. However, now that things have cooled down SUDDENLY we need something a little warmer. We tried to cuddle to warm up, but that just mean one person's blanket would fall off them entirely, so you would wake to a slice of cold air down your shoulder... But tomorrow we can go shopping, so we will pick up a 'normal' duvet (to go with our 'normal' bed!). So only one more night and we will be PERFECT.
In other news... on my way home to Jinseki on Wednesday night Jeff contacted me to warm me to drive carefully because of the bear warning!
Apparently he was shown the Bear Poster by his supervisor at work. The language gap was too great for them to explain much, but they were able to tell him that a bear had been seen in Jinseki (our little town) and another one in Yuki (where Jeff teaches at a couple of schools). He wanted to know how careful we had to be - is it a bad idea to walk around our little village at night? Are we safe to take the rubbish down to the shed? - but they didn't understand, and one bloke just started doing his best snarling bear imitation at Jeff. Ok, helpful...
Other than that, not too much going down over here. We had a big weekend last weekend, as Monday was a public holiday, so we went North to Matsue. A quick itinerary:
Saturday - Went to Izumo taika, to the second most important shrine in Japan, the shrine of marriage. Wandered around, took some pics, were completely swamped by all the Japanese and didn't really know what anything was. Highlight was the frogs in the pond.
- Headed out to a lighthouse, where we were able to go for a a walk on the rocks and look at the sea. Made us miss home a little bit, especially after the chaos at the shrine. I noticed my conversation was veering dangerously close to what was wrong with Japan and what was great about NZ. So not our BEST day.
- Got out to Matuse that night. We intended to have a quiet evening, but there was some kind of festival on at Matsue Castle (an ancient samurai castle), so the lovely people running our accommodation took us out there (actually, they TOLD us we were going and pretty much put us forcibly in the car lol. Obviously they felt it would be unforgivable if we missed it!). The castle and grounds were all lit by large paper lanterns, giving an other-worldly glow. It was insanely beautiful, sitting up at the edge of the grounds looking down on the lower gardens lit by lanterns, the city lights beyond and all over, the moat and canals reflecting all these lights. Totally the highlight of my trip. Probably one of those experiences I will remember Japan for in ten or twenty years time.
Sunday - We thought we would spend the morning wandering round the shops before going on the canal boat and hitting the other big tourist spots in the afternoon. Unfortunately we thought we were going the right way, judging by the road signs, and didn't bother checking the map (ok, three maps!!) in my backpack. Turns out we were wrong. Several hours in the sun later, we finally found the shopping mall in time to grab some sushi, let the sweat dry and head back to our accomodation.
- Back in our room Jeff fell asleep while I read a little. I finally woke him, concerned we would miss the boat if we left any later, and we headed back out. Refreshed after our downtime in the air con, we went on a supercute little canal boat, going under some bridges so low we all had to lie on the flat floor of the boat while the awning was lowered. There were lots of giggle from the Japanese women watching Jeff try to squash down enough!
- After our boat ride, we had a look at a traditional samurai residence (I learnt the true reason Jeff learnt Japanese and came to Japan: he loooooves samurai stuff!). Jeff was delighted to see that the room for the 'Master of the House' was much bigger than the room for his wife - and pointed out to me that he should therefore get a bigger room than me. He loves that I can't argue this, because my Foreigners ID actually says 'Master of the House: Jeffrey Wigg' on it. When we go to England and he can only stay because of MY passport I'll make him pay!!
- We then went back through the castle grounds because Jeff wanted to see them by day AND night (ok, I'll be honest, I wasn't complaining. That castle was seriously cool!). After taking onehundredmillion photos we headed off for dinner.
Sunday - We headed out of town, stopping at Cafe Rosso, recommended by a friend. There Jeff had the most amazing coffee ever. No idea what it tasted like, but I wouldn't let him drink it until he had taken photos of it!!
- Next was Saioogobasogeuwr (yes, it has a real name, I just never remeember it!). It is a manga-themed town, with a street lined with statues of manga (Japanese cartoon characters) and every store selling some type of manga product. Unfortunately every other person in Japan also considered the public holiday a good time to visit, so we shot out of there fairly quickly (well, ok, not until I had time to eat an eyeball - one of the manga characters).
- We had lunch and hit up the Body Shop (yay! Products that I know what they are, and don't contain bleach!!!) in Yonago, then headed down to the Adachi Museum. This place is famous for having been voted Japan's no. 1 garden for seven or eight years now. We thought a beautiful garden would be just the antidote to all the crowds, people and heat of the last few days (yes, those of you who are knowledgeable about Japanese culture will be laughing at us know!). Oh, how taken aback we were to discover the garden is kept so beautiful by only letting people view it from behind glass!! We felt very very stupid!
After trying to decipher the Japanese signs, we managed to find one area where we could at least hop from stone to stone, admiring the pond and getting some fresh air. For the three metres the path lasted. They were right, it is a truly beautiful garden. But I think in future we would trade a little beauty for the chance to wander round in it. Although maybe we just have to wait for the next country for that!!
Hope you are all doing well...
Cheers Charly
P.S. Yeah, managed to add pictures!! Will try to keep this blog interesting by adding pics when appropriate.
Sorry I've been slack about updating this!
On the temperature front (do you notice a theme to my updates??), yesterday we passed a sign that said it was 14 degrees. Jeff pointed out this meant the temperature has dropped 10 degrees in a week! No wonder we are feeling the difference! While it is now a LOVELY temperature during the day - tshirts and long pants type weather - the nights are not so ideal.
When it was really hot we bought 'summer sheets' - like a really light single duvet, so you have one each. They provide a little more warmth than a couple of sheets and are easy to throw off or pull on as the temperature changes. They are pretty small, so Jeff's feet hang out the end - not that this is an issue in 30 degree heat. However, now that things have cooled down SUDDENLY we need something a little warmer. We tried to cuddle to warm up, but that just mean one person's blanket would fall off them entirely, so you would wake to a slice of cold air down your shoulder... But tomorrow we can go shopping, so we will pick up a 'normal' duvet (to go with our 'normal' bed!). So only one more night and we will be PERFECT.
In other news... on my way home to Jinseki on Wednesday night Jeff contacted me to warm me to drive carefully because of the bear warning!
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| I didn't pick this as ideal bear territory... |
Apparently he was shown the Bear Poster by his supervisor at work. The language gap was too great for them to explain much, but they were able to tell him that a bear had been seen in Jinseki (our little town) and another one in Yuki (where Jeff teaches at a couple of schools). He wanted to know how careful we had to be - is it a bad idea to walk around our little village at night? Are we safe to take the rubbish down to the shed? - but they didn't understand, and one bloke just started doing his best snarling bear imitation at Jeff. Ok, helpful...
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| Ah, this looks more like where we will find the bears... |
Saturday - Went to Izumo taika, to the second most important shrine in Japan, the shrine of marriage. Wandered around, took some pics, were completely swamped by all the Japanese and didn't really know what anything was. Highlight was the frogs in the pond.
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| Looking for frogs |
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| Jeff's wildlife photography |
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| Charly sitting on rocks by lighthouse. Yes that bloke is taking my picture. Odd... |
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| Castle grounds lit by paper lanterns |
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| View from the top of the castle |
Sunday - We thought we would spend the morning wandering round the shops before going on the canal boat and hitting the other big tourist spots in the afternoon. Unfortunately we thought we were going the right way, judging by the road signs, and didn't bother checking the map (ok, three maps!!) in my backpack. Turns out we were wrong. Several hours in the sun later, we finally found the shopping mall in time to grab some sushi, let the sweat dry and head back to our accomodation.
- Back in our room Jeff fell asleep while I read a little. I finally woke him, concerned we would miss the boat if we left any later, and we headed back out. Refreshed after our downtime in the air con, we went on a supercute little canal boat, going under some bridges so low we all had to lie on the flat floor of the boat while the awning was lowered. There were lots of giggle from the Japanese women watching Jeff try to squash down enough!
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| Squashing down in the teeniest tunnel!! |
- We then went back through the castle grounds because Jeff wanted to see them by day AND night (ok, I'll be honest, I wasn't complaining. That castle was seriously cool!). After taking onehundredmillion photos we headed off for dinner.
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| Jeff with his castle |
Sunday - We headed out of town, stopping at Cafe Rosso, recommended by a friend. There Jeff had the most amazing coffee ever. No idea what it tasted like, but I wouldn't let him drink it until he had taken photos of it!!
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| Jeff's amazing coffee! |
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| Eating an eyeball... yeah :) |
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| Photo taken through glass... |
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| Fenced off from the garden... |
Hope you are all doing well...
Cheers Charly
P.S. Yeah, managed to add pictures!! Will try to keep this blog interesting by adding pics when appropriate.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Excerpt from an email
This is just a wee excerpt from an email I am writing Mum, because it is VERY important and you should all know about it!
'Good news on the temperature front - it has finally cooled down! Yay!! Yesterday I was sitting on the couch in shorts and a sports bra, having done a few exercises before brekkie (I didn't bring any workout tops and only one pair of workout shorts so I try to exercise inside so I can do it in my underwear! Next time I go into town guess what I'm buying! Yes, men's workout tops!). Anyway, I had been sitting there for a an hour or so answering emails when I felt this strange uncomfortable, unfamiliar feeling. I had to think about it for a while, then I remembered it... yes, I was cold! I would have danced a jig in happiness but that would have warmed me up, so I just went off to have a (warm!) shower and get dressed.'
I fully understand if you feel the need to crack open a bottle of bubbly right now at your work desk in celebration of this - we thought we would never make it, but the coolness was only a fortnight after they PROMISED us it would cool down!!!
Jeff even said we need to go buy a proper blanket - we have been sleeping under 'summer sheets' (like really light duvets, a good size for kids or sweaty adults who just push them off). But if Jeff pulls his up his toes stick out, so they are no good for when he actually wants to warm up. Of course we could cuddle to warm up, but after a month and a half of waking with heat exhaustion if our limbs accidentally touch, it's hard to break the habit of sleeping as far away from each other as possible.
When I talk about 'warming up', it's probably still mid 20's or something, but we have got used to it being SO hot that any drop in temperature seems extreme!
Now that you have heard this tremendous news, I will leave you to celebrate.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Kim chi and rice with emotional blackmail for dessert...
Hey people,
Well, as you can tell by the title of this post, I just had kim chi (even though it's Korean!) with rice and tuna for lunch YUM.
Shortly after eating, while sitting nursing my cup of tea, I got a call from Ken (my Japanese teacher). As my phone is stupid and has the 'reject' button immediately below the name of who is calling and immediately above the call button I, as per usual, hit the wrong button and rejected his call (I do it almost every time. It has actually become a habit now that I don't know how to break!).
I called back straight away and was met by the confusion of the classroom and a little Japanese girl telling me, "No, not sensei. I'm Aoi." Aoi sits next to me in class and her English is some of the best in the class. I'm not sure what's chicken and what is egg there, but the two are linked... But her English is better than most of her classmates and her English teacher - my Japanese teacher - knows it.
I couldn't possibly explain the confusion of that message with me trying to work out whether they had just knicked his phone to play a prank or if it had been an accident that he called me or what, while she ummed and ahhed - or rather 'Ee toouuuu'ed.
I had a sudden brainwave, remembering one of Jeff's class experiences (he had said 'hello' as he walked in the class, so five minutes later when he started his self-introduction he started off with 'how are you?' The students all looked at him in silent confusion until one little boy tentatively answered, 'hello, how are you?'). I took the conversation back to stock standard phrases, asking 'hello, how are you?' to get us back on familiar ground.
From here the conversation was more what Aoi had been expecting and she hesitantly relayed her message; 'We need you. Come back to school at any time.'
I was confused, wondering if it was because they had English class after lunch or needed help with their speeches. I tried to ask if they needed me for English class but she didn't understand. I tried asking her to repeat her message, both in English and in Japanese, but she just made confused noises again, said 'bye' then hung up.
On one hand, I could go 'aww, the kids must have missed me and asked Ken if they could contact me to ask me back!' but the fact is that when I told the students I was leaving (I wrote it down because they understand written English much easier than spoken) I didn't get much reaction at all. A smile and a nod of understanding was about it. I don't expect them to cry and throw me a goodbye party after my eight days in school, but I thought they would be a little disappointed. Little girls in NZ would make a big deal about being sad their pet foreign adult was leaving! I kept asking if they understood, because I expected at least Aoi to look disappointed, but nothing.
So I cannot regard that phone call with anything other than suspicion. Call me a cynic, but I believe I can safely assume that Ken taught her that phrase then handed her his phone to make the call! Emotional blackmail, much?
Ok, just spoke to Jeff and he, being far less judgemental or quick to jump to conclusions (I call it irrationally idealistic!), has pointed out that a lot gets lost in translation and that it was probably supposed to be a message to let me know that I am welcome back to the school at any time. I guess it is true that while Ken's English is good, it is far from perfect and the strength and intimation of the word 'need' may have been lost on him.
I don't know... I'm feeling bad enough about disappointing Ken by leaving school and disappointing Jeff by leaving him on his own in Jinseki during the week... the LAST thing I need is little kids putting the guilts on me!!
Well, as you can tell by the title of this post, I just had kim chi (even though it's Korean!) with rice and tuna for lunch YUM.
Shortly after eating, while sitting nursing my cup of tea, I got a call from Ken (my Japanese teacher). As my phone is stupid and has the 'reject' button immediately below the name of who is calling and immediately above the call button I, as per usual, hit the wrong button and rejected his call (I do it almost every time. It has actually become a habit now that I don't know how to break!).
I called back straight away and was met by the confusion of the classroom and a little Japanese girl telling me, "No, not sensei. I'm Aoi." Aoi sits next to me in class and her English is some of the best in the class. I'm not sure what's chicken and what is egg there, but the two are linked... But her English is better than most of her classmates and her English teacher - my Japanese teacher - knows it.
I couldn't possibly explain the confusion of that message with me trying to work out whether they had just knicked his phone to play a prank or if it had been an accident that he called me or what, while she ummed and ahhed - or rather 'Ee toouuuu'ed.
I had a sudden brainwave, remembering one of Jeff's class experiences (he had said 'hello' as he walked in the class, so five minutes later when he started his self-introduction he started off with 'how are you?' The students all looked at him in silent confusion until one little boy tentatively answered, 'hello, how are you?'). I took the conversation back to stock standard phrases, asking 'hello, how are you?' to get us back on familiar ground.
From here the conversation was more what Aoi had been expecting and she hesitantly relayed her message; 'We need you. Come back to school at any time.'
I was confused, wondering if it was because they had English class after lunch or needed help with their speeches. I tried to ask if they needed me for English class but she didn't understand. I tried asking her to repeat her message, both in English and in Japanese, but she just made confused noises again, said 'bye' then hung up.
On one hand, I could go 'aww, the kids must have missed me and asked Ken if they could contact me to ask me back!' but the fact is that when I told the students I was leaving (I wrote it down because they understand written English much easier than spoken) I didn't get much reaction at all. A smile and a nod of understanding was about it. I don't expect them to cry and throw me a goodbye party after my eight days in school, but I thought they would be a little disappointed. Little girls in NZ would make a big deal about being sad their pet foreign adult was leaving! I kept asking if they understood, because I expected at least Aoi to look disappointed, but nothing.
So I cannot regard that phone call with anything other than suspicion. Call me a cynic, but I believe I can safely assume that Ken taught her that phrase then handed her his phone to make the call! Emotional blackmail, much?
Ok, just spoke to Jeff and he, being far less judgemental or quick to jump to conclusions (I call it irrationally idealistic!), has pointed out that a lot gets lost in translation and that it was probably supposed to be a message to let me know that I am welcome back to the school at any time. I guess it is true that while Ken's English is good, it is far from perfect and the strength and intimation of the word 'need' may have been lost on him.
I don't know... I'm feeling bad enough about disappointing Ken by leaving school and disappointing Jeff by leaving him on his own in Jinseki during the week... the LAST thing I need is little kids putting the guilts on me!!
Job, I think...
Hey people,
Things aren't totally confirmed, as in I haven't been given a contract to sign and Jeff hasn't crunched the numbers to make sure I will win financially on this one, but it looks like I have a JOB. Yay!
It's in Onomichi, well, actually on an island out from Onomichi, so will take about 1 hr 45 to get to from our little place in Jinseki. My plan is to drive down, work the day, stay the night in the staff accomodation, work the next day, then drive back to Jinseki. I intend to work four days a week, so that way I would drive in one direction each working day, spending two nights a week down on my little island. It's not ideal being that far from home so often, but it will stop me going certifiably insane at home (school isn't a lot better. I understand so little and I'm not picking new stuff up fast. Think I'm just too beginner to improve from just listening).
Also it will mean we have our little city/island pad, so when we want to go drinking in the city with friends, we can bus home after. Last time we went out 'drinking' with our friends I was sober driver, so when we left the city I had a 1.5 hr drive home on dark, windy roads (windy? windey? I think windy but I mean they winds round, not that there it is windy as in blowing a gale... Sometimes English is sucky!). In Japan you can't even have one alcoholic drink and drive, so it wasn't the awesomeness that it could have been...
So Jeff is going to number crunch tonight, to make sure that me working four days a week will get enough money to cover my Onomichi rent, my fuel and other car costs (the bridge to the island is a toll bridge) and still have me earning. So watch this space!
I gave my Japanese teacher, Ken, the bad news today. I was expecting to do this big speil explaining how Jeff and I wanted the extra money to travel with and how much I had appreciated the opportunity and everything, but it ended up being a 30 second conversation. He kinda just went 'ok' and took off - always a bad sign!
Further, I'm not sure if I've made things better or worse by telling him I would like to come in on some of my days off. I wanted to say that because a) it is a good opportunity for me to practise my Japanese on the students, b) most importantly, I felt that it would show Ken and the other teachers that I appreciated what they had done for me and still wanted to hang out with them when I could, and c) I thought Ken would take it better if I weaned myself off the school slowly, rather than spurning it totally.
However, later in class Ken told me, in front of the students, that they were doing a play and performing it in front of their parents. I said, "Cool", which meant, "I hope you're only telling me this because you are intending to invite me to watch..." He then said, "And you are part of it, you will be in it because you are one of us."
So as well-meaning as my comment about coming in every now and then on my day off was, maybe I gave him false home about how much I would be round. I told him I would be working four days a week, but maybe he thinks I will be working some weekends (which I won't be)...? I'm now wondering if I should have shut up about coming in on my days off. It just seemed easier, to only come in every now and then, rather than trying to tie up all my loose ends in one go - collecting my drawings from art class, paying for all my school lunches that I haven't been billed for yet, giving a thank-you speech to the teachers, etc. To slowly fade from the school just seemed an easier option. Even so I will have to get a small thankyou gift for the teachers and a larger one for Ken (they are really big on gift-giving in Japan).
Oh - just heard lots of noise and rustling in the neighbour's garden. Thought it was my neighbour. It wasn't, it was a crow! Those things are MASSIVE!
So that's where things are at atm in the life of Charly.
Off to cook dinner so it's on the table when Jeff gets home - what a good little wife! Trying to make up for the fact I will soon be ditching Jeff to cook for himself four out of five weeknights!! (The 'early' shift finishes at 8pm, so I wouldn't be back to Jinseki until around 10pm)
Hope you are all well,
Charly
Things aren't totally confirmed, as in I haven't been given a contract to sign and Jeff hasn't crunched the numbers to make sure I will win financially on this one, but it looks like I have a JOB. Yay!
It's in Onomichi, well, actually on an island out from Onomichi, so will take about 1 hr 45 to get to from our little place in Jinseki. My plan is to drive down, work the day, stay the night in the staff accomodation, work the next day, then drive back to Jinseki. I intend to work four days a week, so that way I would drive in one direction each working day, spending two nights a week down on my little island. It's not ideal being that far from home so often, but it will stop me going certifiably insane at home (school isn't a lot better. I understand so little and I'm not picking new stuff up fast. Think I'm just too beginner to improve from just listening).
Also it will mean we have our little city/island pad, so when we want to go drinking in the city with friends, we can bus home after. Last time we went out 'drinking' with our friends I was sober driver, so when we left the city I had a 1.5 hr drive home on dark, windy roads (windy? windey? I think windy but I mean they winds round, not that there it is windy as in blowing a gale... Sometimes English is sucky!). In Japan you can't even have one alcoholic drink and drive, so it wasn't the awesomeness that it could have been...
So Jeff is going to number crunch tonight, to make sure that me working four days a week will get enough money to cover my Onomichi rent, my fuel and other car costs (the bridge to the island is a toll bridge) and still have me earning. So watch this space!
I gave my Japanese teacher, Ken, the bad news today. I was expecting to do this big speil explaining how Jeff and I wanted the extra money to travel with and how much I had appreciated the opportunity and everything, but it ended up being a 30 second conversation. He kinda just went 'ok' and took off - always a bad sign!
Further, I'm not sure if I've made things better or worse by telling him I would like to come in on some of my days off. I wanted to say that because a) it is a good opportunity for me to practise my Japanese on the students, b) most importantly, I felt that it would show Ken and the other teachers that I appreciated what they had done for me and still wanted to hang out with them when I could, and c) I thought Ken would take it better if I weaned myself off the school slowly, rather than spurning it totally.
However, later in class Ken told me, in front of the students, that they were doing a play and performing it in front of their parents. I said, "Cool", which meant, "I hope you're only telling me this because you are intending to invite me to watch..." He then said, "And you are part of it, you will be in it because you are one of us."
So as well-meaning as my comment about coming in every now and then on my day off was, maybe I gave him false home about how much I would be round. I told him I would be working four days a week, but maybe he thinks I will be working some weekends (which I won't be)...? I'm now wondering if I should have shut up about coming in on my days off. It just seemed easier, to only come in every now and then, rather than trying to tie up all my loose ends in one go - collecting my drawings from art class, paying for all my school lunches that I haven't been billed for yet, giving a thank-you speech to the teachers, etc. To slowly fade from the school just seemed an easier option. Even so I will have to get a small thankyou gift for the teachers and a larger one for Ken (they are really big on gift-giving in Japan).
Oh - just heard lots of noise and rustling in the neighbour's garden. Thought it was my neighbour. It wasn't, it was a crow! Those things are MASSIVE!
So that's where things are at atm in the life of Charly.
Off to cook dinner so it's on the table when Jeff gets home - what a good little wife! Trying to make up for the fact I will soon be ditching Jeff to cook for himself four out of five weeknights!! (The 'early' shift finishes at 8pm, so I wouldn't be back to Jinseki until around 10pm)
Hope you are all well,
Charly
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
To work or not to work, that is the question...
Hey people,
Just a quick note because I'm supposed to be working on my Mighty River Power editing that I took the day off school to do...
On Saturday I'm heading down to Onomichi, 1.5 hours away, to check out a job. It's as an English conversation teacher, is well paid, is 1/2 to 3/4 time hours, includes a fairly cheap staff flat and is in what sounds a beautiful part of the world - on the waterfront where I have to cross two islands to get there from the mainland! It is also close to supermarkets, martial arts classes and places where I can get a feed - those things my current location is not exactly littered with.
I'm trying not to jump the gun because there are any number of things that could stop me taking the job, from work hours to driving distance to disliking the place. However, I have got really excited about the possibility of independence - working and bringing some money into our wee family. Don't tell Jeff, but I FULLY intend to go buy stuff with my new money! Jokes, I actually can't buy anything - I don't fit the clothes, can't wear makeup in this heat and it's stupid to buy books that I then have to pay to post home. So there will not be much of the buying. But if I'm earning it will still stop me feeling bad when I do have to buy a new top/moisturiser/notebook.
Having said all this, being a student at the local school is still an awesome way to learn the lingo and if this job doesn't happen for whatever reason, I will continue to go to Jinseki school - although maybe only part time, to allow myself to try to write 'the novel' and get boring things like laundry and hoovering done (amazing how much more enjoyable they are when you have something to procrastinate though...).
Speaking of procrastination, that is EXACTLY what I'm doing here, so I should get back to it...
Oh, pretend you all care about my shopping: I bought some sunscreen from strawberrynet.com today... LOVING that store!! I heard from more than one source that all the sunscreen over here has bleach in it (which I totally believe because everything with English labels says 'whitening' - that's the last thing I need!!) and it is called 'milk' as opposed to 'cream' - meaning that trying to apply it involves getting more on your clothing than you exposed body parts. So I bought normal sunscreen - free international shipping AND free lippie for being a new customer! New favourite website!!!
Hope you are all doing good.... I will update you after my job-scope session on Saturday.
Charly
P.S. Wow, I use ... way too often. Just had a look through this before I hit Publish Post and almost every paragraph ended with them. Oops!! Sorry if I'm over punctuating you all!
P.P.S. When I have a chance (read: when I've finished my MRP work and Jeff has the internet working) I will try to load some photos on here. In the meantime, please check Jeff's facebook page as he has been pretty good about loading up pictures.
Just a quick note because I'm supposed to be working on my Mighty River Power editing that I took the day off school to do...
On Saturday I'm heading down to Onomichi, 1.5 hours away, to check out a job. It's as an English conversation teacher, is well paid, is 1/2 to 3/4 time hours, includes a fairly cheap staff flat and is in what sounds a beautiful part of the world - on the waterfront where I have to cross two islands to get there from the mainland! It is also close to supermarkets, martial arts classes and places where I can get a feed - those things my current location is not exactly littered with.
I'm trying not to jump the gun because there are any number of things that could stop me taking the job, from work hours to driving distance to disliking the place. However, I have got really excited about the possibility of independence - working and bringing some money into our wee family. Don't tell Jeff, but I FULLY intend to go buy stuff with my new money! Jokes, I actually can't buy anything - I don't fit the clothes, can't wear makeup in this heat and it's stupid to buy books that I then have to pay to post home. So there will not be much of the buying. But if I'm earning it will still stop me feeling bad when I do have to buy a new top/moisturiser/notebook.
Having said all this, being a student at the local school is still an awesome way to learn the lingo and if this job doesn't happen for whatever reason, I will continue to go to Jinseki school - although maybe only part time, to allow myself to try to write 'the novel' and get boring things like laundry and hoovering done (amazing how much more enjoyable they are when you have something to procrastinate though...).
Speaking of procrastination, that is EXACTLY what I'm doing here, so I should get back to it...
Oh, pretend you all care about my shopping: I bought some sunscreen from strawberrynet.com today... LOVING that store!! I heard from more than one source that all the sunscreen over here has bleach in it (which I totally believe because everything with English labels says 'whitening' - that's the last thing I need!!) and it is called 'milk' as opposed to 'cream' - meaning that trying to apply it involves getting more on your clothing than you exposed body parts. So I bought normal sunscreen - free international shipping AND free lippie for being a new customer! New favourite website!!!
Hope you are all doing good.... I will update you after my job-scope session on Saturday.
Charly
P.S. Wow, I use ... way too often. Just had a look through this before I hit Publish Post and almost every paragraph ended with them. Oops!! Sorry if I'm over punctuating you all!
P.P.S. When I have a chance (read: when I've finished my MRP work and Jeff has the internet working) I will try to load some photos on here. In the meantime, please check Jeff's facebook page as he has been pretty good about loading up pictures.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Third grade at Junior High
Hey,
Just a super quick post to tell you I have started at Jinseki Chugakko (junior High). Somehow I went from assistant teacher to student. Third grade student, so I hang out with all the 13 year olds. They love it, but it's very very odd. The teachers are trying to be really good - the Maths teacher even marked my FAIL of a Maths test that I couldn't read the instructions on and just made up answers from the numbers I could read - but I fear Ken-sensei might have been a bit overenthusiastic throwing me in here. I just hope that a) I'm not making life too difficult for the other teachers and b) I actually learn. At the moment I feel like a piece of plastic floating on the tide of Japanese-speaking 13 year olds, but it's true I pick up a couple of key phrases or words every day.
I figure I will give it a shot for a couple of weeks and see if I feel I am learning anything. As I said, I'm concerned I'm making life difficult for the other teachers, even though it is great for the kids practising their English and getting experience hanging out with someone from a different culture. And the lunches are great :D
Anyway, Jeff is waiting on the laptop so we can watch an episode of Outrageous Fortune - get a taste of home!
Let me know what you're up to...
Charly
Just a super quick post to tell you I have started at Jinseki Chugakko (junior High). Somehow I went from assistant teacher to student. Third grade student, so I hang out with all the 13 year olds. They love it, but it's very very odd. The teachers are trying to be really good - the Maths teacher even marked my FAIL of a Maths test that I couldn't read the instructions on and just made up answers from the numbers I could read - but I fear Ken-sensei might have been a bit overenthusiastic throwing me in here. I just hope that a) I'm not making life too difficult for the other teachers and b) I actually learn. At the moment I feel like a piece of plastic floating on the tide of Japanese-speaking 13 year olds, but it's true I pick up a couple of key phrases or words every day.
I figure I will give it a shot for a couple of weeks and see if I feel I am learning anything. As I said, I'm concerned I'm making life difficult for the other teachers, even though it is great for the kids practising their English and getting experience hanging out with someone from a different culture. And the lunches are great :D
Anyway, Jeff is waiting on the laptop so we can watch an episode of Outrageous Fortune - get a taste of home!
Let me know what you're up to...
Charly
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Chilling in the hood...
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)
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)
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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