Weekend In Yanai

As is becoming my routine in Japan, I've had a huge busy weekend that I almost need another weekend to recover from. We got up at the crack of dawn on Saturday to pack and were on the first train to see Christine in Susa. Sarah drove down from Tamagawa. Christine made us a gorgeous brekkie of banana and choc-chip pancakes. The Japanese have really adopted the breakfast culture of America and you can get a huge range of premixed hot-cake powder and syrups. At lunchtime we went down to the Susa elementary school where they were having the cultural equivalent of a kiwi bbq. I have no idea what you call it, but the communal summer meal here is huge bamboo poles cut in half lengthways and laid out propped on trestles so that it forms a little trough. You tie a hose onto one end and run water through the long narrow trough. Then you drop handfuls of cold noodles at one end and watch them race down to the other end (where hopefully someone has put a bucket!) Everybody stands at the sides of the trough with little bamboo cups and try to catch the noodles with their chopsticks as they go down. It is a huge amount of fun and very yummy, you put delicious noodle sauce in your bowl and add other ingredients like spring onion and chopped ham. It is the most refreshing summer food! I will hopefully scan photos of this soon so you can see what I mean.
We played some games with the kids and then we jumped into the car and drove 3 hours to the southern coast of Yamaguchi. In Yanai we met up with Ellen (Melbourne) , Kirk (US) Kathryn and Lauren (UK). They took us out for dinner in the mountains of Kuga, at a place famous for its yakitori - barbequed chicken. It was really good. I also discovered gyoza, little dumplings of pork that you dip into yet more delicious sauce. (I found gyoza at my supermarket and guess what we had dinner tonight!) After dinner we went to karaoke which was crazy as usual, I am starting to lose my inhibitions and do some singing, but I still find it strange. Mostly I just laugh at the terrible, terrible Japanese video clips that go with the songs.
We headed home after a stop at the 7/11 for some donuts (you would not believe the bakery food in Japan. Whoever said you lose weight in Japan was an idiot. They are worse than the Greek bakeries in Melbourne, mum!) .
The next morning I whipped up hot-cakes for us all and we headed out for some heavy duty shopping. Luckily I had every woman's ultimate shopping accessory to carry my bags - Dan :)
For lunch we went to a yaki-niku style restaurant - Vietnamese barbeque. This is the best of all! You buy a platter of shaved beef and cook it yourself on a little round gas bbq inlaid into the table. We had salads with it and it was divine! The summer meat sauces here are to die for. Come over and I'll show you!
After yet more shopping we realised it was 4pm and the last train from Susa to Hagi leaves at 9pm so we got back on the road. It wasn't til we got to our bikes at Hagi station that we realised we had a lot more bags than we left with! Because we stayed with other JETs and carpooled it was a really cheap weekend, plus it was a lot of fun. Can't wait to head off next weekend, we are planning to drive up the coast to Masuda, leave the car there and hop on a train to Hiroshima to see a baseball game with the other JETs. We are hoping to have enough time to get to the peace museum, other JETs say its pretty amazing. The 60th anniversary of the bombing is Aug 6th 2005 so we are hoping to go to the ceremony next year.
I was told I would get my car this Thurs/Fri, but we have had another complication getting the inkan certificate. Mabye next week! Don't know whether to laugh or cry sometimes. Thank God our friends have cars and we are having a rockin time!

Visit To Aishima

Today was a day where I couldn't believe I was actually getting paid to be a tourist! There are three islands off the coast of Hagi - Oshima, Aishima and Mishima. Today we went out on the ferry to Aishima, the island with the smallest population. There are no shops at all, and with a village of only 80 people it would be hard to keep anything a secret there. A school was built in Aishima in the 80's when the Japanese economy was booming and there were about 20 or so students. Today there are only 7 in total, including elementary and junior high! There is also a nursery (under 7's) of four. The school buildings are beautiful and the teacher/student relationship is very family-like.
Most of the teachers live on Aishima in teacher's housing, away from their families in Hagi. The education system is very different here because they control who works where, and for how long. This is much unlike NZ where you can find a teacher still at the same school they started at 30 years before. These teachers are usually absolute pros or dried-out boring prunes. In Japan, the Superintendant of the B.O.E moves a teacher every 3-4 years, and principals are rotated even more frequently. So the vice-Principal of Aishima did not choose to be there, just as our supervisor did not choose to work at the B.O.E office. He tells us often that he really misses his students and that his is starting to forget his English! While it is not an ideal system, I think its probably better NZ in a lot of ways.
The ferry ride was 40 mins and left from Hagi Port at 8am. It was a good calm trip, and when we got there the V-P met us and drove us very steeply up what must have been roads but were in reality paved goat tracks. There were fields and fields of watermelons, the crop Aishima is famous for. People in Aishima are either watermelon farmers or fishermen. We were told that fishermen earn good money which is why they voluntarily live so far out.
Once at the school we spent the morning helping 2 students prepare for the English speech competition which is to be held at the end of September. They were slightly behind compared to the other kids we've coached so far, but they were quick learners. There is a lot of job satisfaction with one-on-one teaching, you realise how much progress a student can make with a native speaker. They try so hard and are so thankful. I just love my job and can't wait to start full-time teaching on Sept 1st, although I know there will be some daunting moments.
Speaking of islands, on my second week of teaching I will be going out to Mishima for 2 days. Because it is a long and expensive ferry trip out there, the B.O.E will put me up at a local ryokan. A ryokan is a traditional Japanese-style hotel, you sleep on futons, wear a loose kimono-type robe and eat the Japanese food provided. Sounds like an authentic slice of rural Japan. Dan is jealous because he doesn't get to go. I think this is probably a good thing though, he gets seasick quite easily. Today on the return trip it was sunny but very windy and the sea was quite choppy. Our little ferry was crashing and rocking through the waves, I really should have been using the free time to study my Hiragana flash cards. Alas instead I was up on the open deck enjoying the cool wind and sea spray, pretending to be Kate Winslet on board the Titanic. Unfortunately Dan was feeling too queasy to shout "I'm the King of the world!". Oh well.
Obane-san our supervisor told us today that my new inkan (Japanese signature stamp, a requirement for legal documents) will be ready on Tuesday, meaning that my car will possibly be ready for me to purchase next Thurs/Fri. I don't know whether to laugh or cry that buying my car is now entering its third week of negotiations! Shopping trip in Yamaguchi City here I come!

Welcome Party enkai Japanese style

I have to say that Dan and I were a little apprehensive about our enkai, we had heard that basically everyone tries to get you as pissed as possible. Normally that is fun, but I had to make 2/3s of my speech in a foreign language! The tradition at an enkai is that you never pour your own drink, you pour everybody else's. As the guests of honour we had people milling around us with large bottles of beer waiting for us to take a sip so that they could immediately top up the glass. Thankfully for my small-town NZ binge-drinking youth culture training, I managed to maintain my composure through the night.
The enkai was held at a nice beachfront hotel in Hagi, there were 32 mostly men there, all the bigwigs of Hagi education. I was disappointed to see that none of the admin staff were there, one of the girls in the office has been really helpful to me but I guess rank is everything. The other thing that struck me as odd is that none of the wives were there. Work and family are kept separate. In NZ I would have met my supervisors wife by now and my guess is that here I never will.
First we had speeches, I was really touched that our superintendant Wada-san, who is a very jolly old man, made a huge effort to say his speech in English. For them it is so difficult and I was really humbled to see him struggling through it for our sakes. We hear him laugh from our office about 4 times a day and he sounds like Santa Claus.
Dan and I then did speeches, I thanked our supervisor for being so good to us, and our superintendant for giving us ice-cream on our first day when we were obviously nearly melting ourselves. We tucked into the food and it was pretty good, I tried eel for the first time, raw fish, prawns and lobster. They made a big deal about trying the kiwi food I had made for them which was sweet. I was at a loss with only a couple of elements and a tiny toast grill, no oven! So in the end I made mousetraps with Marmite, and chocolate fudge. Gran taught me to make both those things as a kid. They seemed to like it but you never know. Actually the cooking sake and mirin that I cook shaved beef in here smells a lot like Marmite so maybe.
Then Dan and I got back up on stage and showcased a bit of NZ, we showed a big map, squeezed the bum of my stuffed kiwi so it would make squeaking kiwi noises, held up an All Black shirt, and showed the blown up colour photos of NZ. One of the younger teachers did a bit of a stand-up routine with Dan, we gave the explanation in English and he would 'translate'. Everyone was roaring with laughter so God knows what he said. It didn't help that in Japanese Dan accidentally said his sister was go ju (50) rather than ju go (15). I held up a pic of Jodi in her butterfly wings and said "Sore wa watashi no mei desu - This is my niece" and everyone cooed.
I think it was a bit more formal than some enkais can be, but we had a great time and it was nice to socialise outside of work. We were forced to speak Japanese at the table as no one had English so I got a bit more confident which is great. I am trying to make more Japanese friends so I can practice and jump in the deep end. We left the hotel that night with two huge bunches of roses and we were pretty happy. We were both overwhelmed at the hospitality and kindness and the big deal they make out of welcoming new people. I will never forget our enkai night and I feel as if I have truly experienced a slice of Japanese culture. Kampai!

Welcome To Rosie's Japanese Adventures

Hi everyone and greetings from Nihon. This is my page to keep you posted on my rollercoaster of adventures here in Japan.
We have had another great weekend travelling around, some JETs Sarah (Ohio) and Christine (Vancouver) from up the coast came to stay on Friday night for some We-Got-Our-First-Pay celebration drinks. It was a really nice feeling, for most of us the most money for the least work we've ever done. Just wait til school starts in September! The beer is expensive but top shelf is cheaper than duty free, weird but good. Then on Saturday morning after some lazy shopping we drove to Hofu, about an hour and a half away on the other (southern) coast. There we met up with some JETs for a couple of games of bowling. I am pleased to report that Dan was the overall champion for both games. Bowling is nice and cheap in Japan, afterwards we all went out for nome hoddai/tabe hoddai which is all you can drink/eat for a set fee. It was a Vietnamese style barbeque where you cook your own meat on grills set into the table. Was nice to catch up with everyone else and keep up with the 'guchi goss.
Today, after yet more shopping, I have been preparing for our official Welcome Party tomorrow night. All Board of Ed staff will be there and teachers from each school we are going to. There will be an address from the mayor and we have been warned that Hagi Cable TV are coming to interview us. Hopefully I will be able to memorise some suitable Japanese by then!
Tonight I put a sweatshirt on for the first time in Japan, it dropped to a dangerously low 20ish degrees. We are hoping to get our car sometime this week, I would try and describe the million and one things that are required to purchase a car here but its too exhausting. I'm looking forward to zooming off whenever I feel like it. Until then I'm on my bike :)