November 2003
Friday-Monday, Oct. 31-Nov. 3, 2003 — Roughing it in Iya
My first foray into the wilds of western Tokushima!
I signed up for an outdoorsy trip for this long weekend. Monday is “Culture Day” and another national holiday. The plan: to spend Saturday through Monday in Iya Valley, deep in the mountains of the prefecture. Fall is a gorgeous time to be in Japan and I wanted to take advantage of this weekend to check out the changing leaves as well as some landmarks on my To-Visit list.
Friday night I took the train west with Sally and spent the night in the town of Awa Kawashima at the apartment of the local ALT, Chanda. It was my first time to see Chanda’s apartment. She has a spare room! I was envious. Sally and I arrived at about 8:30 p.m. and Chanda, who teaches at a high school, had just finished entertaining her English club with a small Halloween party. She regaled us with stories of how thin the girls were and how they still somehow managed to consume everything she put in front of them.
One thing about Chanda’s apartment that I am not envious of is its mosquito problem.
Just sitting around, we noticed the unusual high number of mosquitoes flying around. Chanda said she didn’t know how they got in and she’d wracked her brain trying to figure out how to get rid of them. Obviously, she’d yet to find a solution.
You know those coil things you can burn as a mosquito repellent? Chanda said she put on in her bedroom one night, shut the door and went to sleep. The next the she knew when she woke up was that she couldn’t see a foot in front of her because of the smoke. She didn’t try that method again.
I went to sleep that night hoping that maybe, if I burrowed into my blanket enough, the mosquitoes wouldn’t get me. No such luck. I got one on my neck, the side of my face and my NOSE.
Halfway through the night I felt someone turn on the overhead light. It was Chanda. She was sick of the mosquitoes eating away at us and was going to do something about it. I kept the blanket pulled over me but for the next half hour or so, this is what I heard: silence … WHAP!! … silence … WHAP! as she went after the blood-suckers with her indoor slipper. It would have been sooo funny if I hadn’t been so necessary …
The next morning, Mat, a Canadian ALT in the mountain town of Kamikatsu, picked Sally and me up. We piled our blankets and backpacks into in his tiny little Mira four-door and headed out.
It took us only about an hour to get to Ikeda, a town in northwest Tokushima-ken. This is where we were going to meet the others before heading south into the mountains. We were two hours early — which was good, since we still needed to get groceries and eat lunch. I bought about $20 worth of food and water for the weekend. We grabbed lunch at a restaurant near the station, where we were supposed to meet. The restaurant had fake dishes out front so you could see what it offered. Food, even fake food, never looks as appetizing when there are flies buzzing around. Nevertheless my seafood pilaf was pretty good. It was rather like fried rice.
By 2 p.m. the others had more or less arrived. Altogether, 18 people went on the trip. Chris, a longtime ALT and the organizer of the trip, led the caravan into the mountains.
While I like living in Tokushima City, I really enjoy the opportunities to get away, too. The crowdedness and concrete falls behind and you are left with quaint houses with tiled roves, meandering rivers, slim bridges, narrow roads that hug the mountainside and, in the fall, green mountainsides dusted with gold and red. The scenery was incredible. The sky was clear and the weather ideal: cool, with just a hint of bite, but not too cool.
Our first stop: the Pissing Boy Statue. I kid you not. You drive on miles of winding roads through the mountain and out of nowhere, there’s this rather random sculpture of a boy, well, peeing into the gorge down below him. There’s really nothing else to see around him, except the fall foliage.
Next, we went to our cabins. Chris had booked three cabins for 18 people. Three of those people had their own tents. Now that I do the math, I wonder how seven people ended up in my cabin …
I was the only person in my cabin who hadn’t brought a futon. Chris had stressed bringing a futon, as the cabin was nothing more than a room with a tatami floor and a sink. I had chosen not to bring one because I’d have had to lug it, and my big comforter, onto the train as well as found space for it in Mat’s car. Because I didn’t have a comforter, I had to sleep at the foot of everyone else’s futons. I told them to watch their feet.
There were only a handful of cabins at this campsite, which was situated right by the river. It was such a peaceful, serene place to stay. It was also down the way from the Kazurabashi, the famed vine bridge. When we passed by, it was rife with tourists looking for photo ops.
One of the best things about traveling in Japan is that you know there’s always an onsen nearby for you to bathe. After throwing most of our stuff in the cabins, we bundled back into the cars and headed to the nearby Kazurabashi Onsen. The campsite had showers, but only two in each restroom. The onsen let us all take care of that task while enjoying the view — because this was an outdoor onsen.
At the onsen, which was housed in a hotel, we took the elevator to the third floor. From there, we took a lift — rather like a cable car, but one that never left the ground — up the mountain to the onsen. There was a men’s onsen, a women’s onsen, and a mixed onsen for both men and women. They were divided by thick walls of bamboo slats. I went into the women’s onsen, which looked out onto the mountains of Nishi-Iya, the nearby town. It was dusk and I didn’t have my glasses on (they would have fogged up anyway), so I couldn’t fully appreciate the view, but what I could see was fantastic.
The cool thing about outdoor onsens is that even though the air is chilly, the hot water of the furo, the bath, is more than enough to keep you warm. I ended up choosing a spot right next to the vents where the hot water came out and sat there just as a jet of even hotter water came up. I fled the bath. As much as I really like onsens, I can only stay so long before I start to get light-headed from the heat.
That night, we cooked our dinners over the barbeque. I had sausages, sweet corn and Pringles. Healthy. Oh yeah, and marshmallows. You can’t have a campfire without marshmallows.
Chris has stressed how cold it got at night and had already expressed dubiousness at my not bringing a futon. But my thermals and my comforter kept me nice and toasty all night. Plus, as I’d already had my share of mosquito bites, I doused any exposed skin with bug repellent before I went to sleep. I awoke bite-free.
In the morning, we bypassed the more popular Kazurabashi nearer to our campsite for another one, the Oku Iya vine bridges, which were further away. There were two bridges, which I am told are called a “male” and a “female” bridge. Chris told me that the bridges were built back in the day when two clans had been warring. One of the clans had fled to the mountains of Iya to hide out. They built these vine bridges so they could get from place to place easier. The beauty of vine bridges was that they were dispensable. If the enemy clan tracked them down, these people just ran across the bridge and then chopped it down, preventing anyone from following them. Then, when it was safe, they’d just build another one.
The vine bridges were in a picturesque location, with a small waterfall, moss-covered rocks, fallen leaves and a musical stream. Even though the bridges weren’t that high up, I was glad the vine bridges were reinforced with cable. Apparently they’re still rebuilt every once in a while when they’ve become too worn. I was surprised how wide the spaces between the wooden slats were — I had to walk carefully to make sure a leg didn’t fall through.
At one point I was taking pictures of the waterfall below when some Japanese women decided they wanted to pass by me. But they didn’t want to let go of the handrail, a small portion of which I was blocking. Rather than wait for me to take the picture and get out of their way, they decided to use ME as their handrail, CLUTHING at me while muttering apologies in Japanese. Sheesh.
Mt. Tsurugi was next on the itinerary. Unlike the weather the day before, which had been gorgeous and clear, Sunday had dawned cloudy and misty. I hadn’t brought any rain gear but manage to bum a spare 100-yen ($1) raincoat from one of the others. It was pink.
The weather wasn’t going to stop us from climbing the mountain. There was also a lift that took you halfway and then you could climb the rest of the way. Originally I had planned to use the lift. I’m not too keen on hiking unless it’s really easy and I was pretty sure that this wouldn’t be my definition of easy. But finally I decided that I would do the hike from bottom to top since I’d be going with Sally and Andrea, a JET from Brooklyn, NY. We established early on we were slow and would take frequent breaks. I was comforted to know I was among fellow slow-hikers.
To get to the hiking trail, you first climb up a pile of stairs to a temple-like structure. The group, minus two girls who opted for the lift, started out all together but Sally, Andrea and I quickly fell behind. Chris said he’d wait for us but we warned him of our pace so he abandoned us.
Our routine something like this: Walk for 10 minutes. Rest. Walk for 10 minutes. Rest. Ease hitch in side. Wait for heartbeat to return to normal. Resume climbing endless series of stairs. Look for a good excuse to take a break. Tie shoelace as an excuse to rest. Rest. And so on.
At one point the trail intersected with the lift. It was so surreal, watching these expressionless people ride up the lift closer to the clouds that blanketed the mountain. Even weirder was the eerie organ music piped out over loudspeakers along the lift. It was like these people were souls going to heaven.
It took us a little over an hour to get to the midway point. We were surrounded by a thick cloud — not fog — that made the temperature even chillier and blanketed you in a whiteness that made visibility low. I pulled on my ski cap and gloves. We had two choices: to take the easier way to the top, which would take longer, or take the harder way, which was steeper but shorter. We decided on the more difficult route.
Step by agonizing step, we trudged upward. Oh, I forgot to mention what I was carrying: Whereas some of the others had opted to do the climb carrying nothing, not even a camera, I had my backpack with me, which contained my jacket (in case my sweatshirt didn’t prove enough), camera, purse and some food and water. It was heavy. I envied the others their lack of luggage.
We finally reached the restaurant at the top of the mountain at a little past 2 p.m. Chris, already having finished his meal there, came out to tell us we hadn’t reached the official top of the mountain. Resolutely we walked the last pathway to a small clearing enshrouded in misty white. It was surprised to see the sort of foliage at the top of the mountain. It seemed like a rolling cornfield. They weren’t really cornstalks, but they looked similar.
I rewarded my hard work with some rice and curry at the mountaintop restaurant and then some Pringles and raisins from my backpack. I was hungry. The mountaintop also sold warm sake (that’s how sake is served in the winter — ingenious, isn’t it?), which Andrea sampled.
The hike back down to the midway point took far less time than it had to come up. We took the lift down, something I had been looking forward to since taking my first step upward. It was a peaceful, albeit steep at times, descent accompanied with that peculiar heavenly music.
Even better, after the hike we went to another onsen. The Hikyono-yu Onsen had a bath so big you could have swum in it. This one had a digital temperature gauge. The water in the inside bath was 38.1 degrees Celsius. That’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than my core body temperature!
There was also an outdoor onsen, which was tiny, but I couldn’t stay in it anyway — too hot. It was 39.7 degrees Celsius or 103 degrees Fahrenheit. You’d be surprised what a difference a couple more degrees of heat makes.
We ate at a restaurant at the onsen. I had tonkatsu, fried pork. A traditional Japanese meal is a curious presentation. The Japanese will eat different foods in their meal but it will all be separated in separate dishes. For example, when the waitress brought out my meal, there was a little container for vegetables, pickled vegetables, the rice, the fried pork, the noodles and a foul-smelling concoction of seafood. I thought I ate everything but raw meat but apparently there are exceptions.
The group returned to the campsite. That night as we roasted marshmallows over the campfire, one of the couples, Emily and Drew, told us of a bizarre cave-museum-place they’d stumbled upon that day. They hadn’t gone with us to Mt. Tsurugi because they’d gone before, so they went to this cave-museum that they’d discovered when they’d gotten lost earlier in the weekend. They refused to say what this place contained but made clear they had left pretty disturbed. We had to see it to believe it, they said. A group of us decided to check it out the next day.
I bedded down and woke to the morning rain. It rained much more Monday morning, so I was glad we’d gotten our hiking in the day before. We packed up and headed out to see this bizarre place for ourselves.
Turns out Emily and Drew were not kidding about the creepiness of this place.
We forked over 600 yen (about $6), drove through the cave and parked the car. I don’t know if it was meant to be zoo as well or not, but there were cages with monkeys, rabbits and a boar in depressing conditions. Tentatively we walked back to the cave, which had to entrances in it to branching rooms. In the first cave-room, there was a big Buddha with smaller figurines lined up on either side of him. A little odd to find him in a cave, but not so weird.
Then we rounded the corner.
Around the corner were these two rooms that you couldn’t actually go inside, but that you could look into. There were naked mannequins in these two rooms. And let’s just leave it that. But we like to refer to this place as the Sex Museum now.
We went to the other offshoot of the cave and found ourselves in this much bigger series of dimly lit passages. Along the sides of the walkways were statues and displays, almost like an art gallery of really disquieting pieces. More often than not these statues depicted disturbing images like a person eating a baby … or maybe giving birth to one, we couldn’t tell, or pots laden with mannequin body parts, or people with body parts of abnormal proportion.
Later we examined the signs at the two entrances more closely. We deduced that the sign that led to the Buddha said, “Heaven” and the sign leading to the child-gobbling statues said, “Hell.”
One of the people in our group remarked, “I can understand people stumbling onto a place like this — but you’ve got to wonder about people who come here knowing what they’re going to see …”
Having ended our Iya trip on that note, we headed home. Three hours later I was snug in my apartment again, planning my groceries for the week.
Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2003 — A little consideration, please
I know it’s considered acceptable for men to urinate in public here (I know, I know), but GEEZ mister, did you have to do it RIGHT OUTSIDE my apartment IN FRONT OF ME?
Oh, I got my Nyquil on Friday. I had thought that the medication would be shipped from within Japan, making it a domestic purchase. I figured the Foreign Buyers’ Club had somehow arranged it so they could sell that kind of stuff within the country. But no, my stuff was shipped from California. I don’t know precisely how that works, how I couldn’t bring Nyquil with me from the U.S. but I can have it shipped to me from the U.S., but I’m just happy to have it.
Thursday, Nov. 6, 2003 — Random bits
• School schedules here constantly. Sometimes classes last 50 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes. Today they lasted 40 minutes. Some days you have sixth period, some days you don’t. I used to ask everyday what the schedule was but I’ve since given up on that and just go with the flow.
• One of my English teachers has a book on her desk that reads, “In the Sky over Nagasaki: An A-Bomb Primer for Children.”
• My microwave oven is both a microwave AND an oven. Brilliant.
• I have to separate my trash into: burnables, nonburnables, cardboard, milk cartons, recyclable plastics, newspapers, magazines and books (yes, books). The sad thing is EVERYONE I talk to tells me that even though the Japanese government picks up these things on separate days, ultimately, they really DO burn everything. Very sad and disheartening.
• Because of the death of central heating in Japan, the Japanese rely on, among other things, a device called a kotatsu, for heating. A kotatsu is basically a knee-high coffee-table-like piece of furniture. On the underside of the kotatsu is an electric heater. In the winter, you throw a blanket over the kotatsu, turn on the heater and keep your lower half warm by sitting with it beneath the blanket.
I use my kotatsu as a nightstand.
• It’s election season here. And you do you know what that means? It means NOISE POLLUTION. Here’s how politicians campaign: They send out their minions in vans equipped with really loud speakerphones and one of the minions, almost always a woman, frantically speaks into microphone. They crank up the volume to its maximum setting and drive around town. The walls here are really thin and the yammering gets SO LOUD when these people drive by my apartment.
Sometimes politicians also set up a stage in front of Tokushima Station and preach to the masses.
Friday, Nov. 7, 2003 — Of assassins and second-hand musical instruments
YES!!! I got myself a CLASSICAL GUITAR! My quest for a classical guitar began thusly: First I asked around my fellow JETs where I should get a cheap classical guitar. I want a cheap one because I’m likely not going to be able to bring it with me when I leave Japan, so it doesn’t make sense to get a pricey one. A lot of people told me to check out Hard Off, a store that sells second-hand electronics, audio equipment, CDs and musical instruments.
I went to Hard Off and eyed their guitars. Then I realized I didn’t know the difference between acoustic guitars and classical guitars. I left and later consulted with friend. Classical guitars have NYLON STRINGS, duh.
I went back to Hard Off. The guitar that I liked cost more than $400. That wasn’t gonna cut it. I left.
I remembered that Hard Off has a big “Junk” section, with big signs posted around that say you can’t test whether the stuff works ahead of time, you can’t return if it you buy it, and they don’t guarantee anything about the “junk” products. I figured it was worth a try to see the junk instruments.
I went back to Hard Off. There were several classical guitars in the junk section, some even with strings still on them. They were all a little worse for the wear, but I didn’t mind. A little spit and polish would do the trick. I eyed a $50 guitar that looked promising. I also checked out the guitar cases, but none of them were the backpack-kind that I wanted so I could carry my guitar around while on my bicycle. I left. I asked my friend and English teacher Kiyomi if she’d be so kind to bring me to Hard Off sometime since she has a car. She graciously agreed.
So tonight, before we went to go see Kill Bill, Kiyomi brought me to Hard Off. My hand was about to grab the $50 guitar when my eyes settled on a $35 one with a richer, deeper red color. It reminded me of my viola’s color. I got that one instead, grabbed a new set of strings, a capo (which turned out to be the wrong kind, DRAT!), a tuner and some polish. Ahhhhh. Such relief. My new toy.
On we went to Kill Bill. You know, it was foolish of me to forget this was a Quentin Tarantino film. Because Quentin Tarantino movies are very violent. In addition to the violence being a little more than I could handle, a good 40 percent of the movie was in Japanese. <sigh> I was like, “You’ve subtitled the English, why can’t you subtitle the Japanese, TOO?!” But that would be a pretty silly request since we’re in Japan and all. Not counting the parts where blood is splattering, I liked the way Kill Bill looked (and the awesome soundtrack), but I’ve got to say I’m not really sitting on the edge of my seat for Part II.
But three years from now, I’m gonna watch this movie again. Then I’ll find out how much Japanese I’ve learned and how much I missed when I first saw Kill Bill because I didn’t speak Japanese.
Sunday, Nov. 9, 2003 — Making music
Yesterday I took all the remaining strings of my guitar off and threw them away. The nylon strings looked really worn and the two wire strings were all rusty. One of them wasn’t even a guitar string — it was a viola string, maybe a violin string.
I polished my guitar yesterday, made it look all pretty. You barely notice the scratches. Today I put on a new set of strings. They’re so nice and shiny. Now I gotta start practicing.
Monday, Nov. 10, 2003 — Clarification
I mentioned the different counting systems in Japanese in an earlier entry. My list, it turns out, was quite incomplete: Thus far, I have learned of different ways to count: people; objects; flat, thin objects; large appliances; birds; pills; chopsticks; age; sets (two ways); large animals; the number of times; building floors, animals (not counting large animals); drinks in cups and glasses; long objects; and small objects.
Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003 — Kado
Kado is the art of flower arrangement. It turns out Kurohashi-sensei, my calligraphy teacher, gives instructions on that craft as well. After calligraphy this evening, Sally and I went to an adjoining room. Kurohashi-sensei paired us with two of her students. We unrolled the flowers and leaves from their newspaper covering. Kurohashi-sensei showed us the kenzan, a stand that’s basically a nail-bed with the sharp ends pointing up. You stick the flowers and stem and leaves on the stand. I was surprised how secure and base it provides for the arrangement.
Kurohashi-sensei showed up how to make one type of flower arrangements with yellow chrysanthemums of some sort. We wrote down the English words for her along the way. I almost pierced my finger on the kenzan along the way, too.
After showing us where to put the leaves and flowers, Kurohashi-sensei took everything off the stand and asked us to try doing it on our own twice. It was hard because I think there are principles to be followed when it comes to flower arrangement, but we didn’t really know them. So we kinda just winged it and checked constantly with Kurohashi-sensei if we were putting things in the right places.
Thursday, Nov. 13, 2003 — The immigration office
Once you’re a resident of Japan, if you want to leave the country and come back, you have to get a re-entry permit. It you want to leave and come back more than once, you have to get a multiple re-entry permit. A single permit will cost your $30. A multiple re-entry permit runs $60. They both last three years, the length of a JET’s maximum stay. Needless to say, it is highly recommended to us JETs to get the multiple re-entry permit.
Takeuchi-sensei loaded the first-year Tokushima City JETs into two staff cars and brought us to the immigration office to take care of that. To buy a permit, you first have to go to the post office around the corner and buy $60 stamp. Then you bring them stamp back to the immigration office and use THAT to pay for your permit. Weeeeeird, but very typical of Japanese bureaucracy — requiring two steps when only one is necessary.
I noticed the immigration office kept reading glasses on its front desk. One frame was bright red, another bright blue and another bright yellow. I surmised they were consciously made that ugly so no one would steal them. But no one steals anything in Japan, so that’s probably not the case …
Friday, Nov. 14, 2003 — Gobble, gobble
Ikawa-sensei said she’d like to do the scavenger hunt for her class, this game I’d devised that involves giving the students a list of different tasks they must complete in one class. She also wanted to talk about Thanksgiving, since I won’t be here at this school the actual week of Thanksgiving. I knew the game would probably go pretty well because I’d be able to work with her on tailoring it to the class level and explaining it to the students.
Because the first-grade classes are divided in half and thus you only teach 20 students at a time, I changed the game format. Rather than work for signatures, they’d work for MONEY. These kids seem to really like fake money, so I made that the incentive. I split them into six groups. For each task an individual student finished, they collected $1 for their team. The team with the most money would win. I gave them tasks like, “Tell a teacher what kind of fruit you want in your pie,” “Show a teacher something orange,” “When is Thanksgiving this year?” and, unrelated, “How many stickers does your group have? Write it on the board.”
The final task was, “Say, ‘Gobble’ 10 times fast.” I told them as extra incentive, I’d pay $2 if a student said “gobble” 10 times WHILE flapping their arms like a turkey. I was eager to find out who’d take the bait.
Money works wonders. The game went SOOO WELL. I was laughing so much of the time. These kids may be half in number than the third-grade classes, but they were twice as loud. I was so excited to hear them being excited, scurrying around, loud and spitting out English.
But most of all, I was delighted to watch them act like turkeys. :-D
Some kids were quite tentative and self-conscious about doing it but others flapped their arms with gusto. They were always so triumphant when I forked over $2. It was funny to see them try to incite their teammates to do the same so they could get more money. What’s a few seconds of indignity when you are “paid” for it, I guess. ;-) Some students didn’t flap their arms at all, but that was okay because they still earned $1 at least for their team by reciting “gobble.”
I felt so good after playing this because I’d enjoyed myself and the students had, too. The team with the most money got stickers (they do anything for stickers, the bigger, the better) from Ikawa-sensei. One team was so into, "gobble," when they played janken (rock, paper, scissors) to see which team member would get the best sticker, rather than recite the usual “Sai shou gu! Janken hoi!” they said, “Sai sho GOBBLE! Janken GOBBLE!” Hahaha. :-) It was such a marked reception to the one my game had received earlier this week. I really feel it has to do with the fact that Ikawa-sensei and I were able to discuss and revise the game together and she was able to explain to the kids what needed to be done. With the other teacher, I was left to my own devices without any support.
My day got even better. I went to the city office to teach eikaiwa, adult conversation class, and biked home with Mike, the other ALT who handled the second eikaiwa. It’s gotten downright chilly here — I can’t feel my feet or hands when I’m in my apartment — and I had resolved to get a kerosene container and kerosene for my heater that evening.
Mike showed me this little family-run hardware store just around the corner from where we live. I bought a 18-liter kerosene container and a pump. Then we biked to the nearest gas station got kerosene. The container is unwieldy once it’s full, so we put it on our bikes and walked back, wheeling our bikes beside us. I pulled out my heater (which I hear my predecessor never used, which means it hasn’t been turned on in three years) and Mike showed me how to fill it and turn it on.
Warm again, WARM AGAIN. What a huge relief. It had gotten to the point where the only time I felt warm in my apartment was when I was in bed or in the shower, with blistering-hot water. My body finally feels as if it has thawed out from its perennial state of being frozen. I envy those with central heating.
Saturday-Sunday, Nov. 14-15, 2003 — Hanging out in Kobe
My first time in Kobe! It’s always nice to go to a big city every now and then. A bunch of the guys are going to Awaji Island today for a soccer tourney, so one of the girls organized a weekend trip to Kobe as an alternative. I boarded a bus in front of Tokushima Station with four other ALTs — Sally, Jane, Sarah and Steph — and we headed out at 10:30 a.m.
The bus-ride took two hours (and cost a pretty penny, I might add — nearly $60 roundtrip). I think sometimes I become self-conscious hanging out with other foreigners when we are surrounded by Japanese people. I don’t know if it because I am Asian in heritage or because I’m quiet by nature, but when I’m with my friends I tend to notice how loud we’re being. Still, I really enjoyed getting to chat with the others during the bus ride. I see Sally several times a week, but I don’t see the others that often because I don’t socialize that much. Sarah is the only Welsh JET I know of in Tokushima-ken, and she’s down south in Yuki, which is on the coast. Jane (English) and Steph (Canadian) are in the city with me and Sally, but they have different employers.
Like clockwork (I love the Japanese public transportation system, except its priceyness), the bus dropped us off at in Kobe at one of the city’s three main stations. Our first order of business was finding a place to stay. Jane had called around trying to find a hotel for us before we came, but all the hotels had been full so she had to book spots for us at a hostel that was kind of far away from downtown Kobe, where we would be spending most of our time.
Even though the hostel was cheaper than a hotel, we probably would have paid the same amount when you factored in transportation to the hostel. So when we arrived in Kobe, we found a tourist information center to see if they could find us a hotel that was closer to downtown. The nice staff not only found us a hotel that was practically across the street from the station, but they called in for us and made a reservation for two rooms, a triple and a double.
We departed and made our way into Kobe. It has such a different vibe from Tokushima. The buildings are taller, the shops are more modern-looking and there are more people. The people look more “urban,” if you can believe it. Japanese people dress stylishly (“stylish” being relative, of course) already, but you could tell the people in Kobe were even more conscious of it than in Tokushima.
I had come in hopes of doing some Christmas shopping, but I soon realized that wasn’t going to happen. It’s difficult to shop for specific items when you’re going with a group. Plus, I wanted stuff that was specifically Japanese to get for my family. The stuff in Kobe, I could just as easily get in America.
I have to say, I felt a little out of place while I was in Kobe. My four companions were blonde and much taller than me — Steph, in fact, was a foot taller than me. So everywhere we went, I could feel eyes following us, or at least them. It must have looked quite incongruous, seeing these four tall blondes and this short Asian girl with them. I mentioned this to a teacher of mine later and she joked that people probably thought I was the interpreter.
At the same time, I listened to plenty of stories and complaints from my friends while I was in Kobe about how their being Caucasian has led to plenty of stares, rude comments and questions, and even groping (including from their students). It made me appreciate how I blend in with the locals. I have yet to experience any of that, thank God.
First we went in search of a place to eat. We settled on an Italian place that served delicious pasta. We passed a place that advertised steak, which Kobe is famous for but would have probably been quite expensive. Afterward, we went into a bunch of stores, including Benetton, the Gap (two of them), a Levi’s shop (waaaay expensive). My friends were overjoyed because they’re much more likely to find clothes that fit them in those shops than in Tokushima shops. They were even able to use credit cards, something I hadn’t seen since coming to Japan. Having abandoned my Christmas-shopping, I settled on getting stuff for me, and got a thermal top (I’ll need it) at the Gap and some pretty stationery at a Japanese shop.
Japan doesn’t really have malls like we do in America, but they do have covered shopping arcades, which is basically like a covered street of stores. We walked through those, too.
When evening came, we went to our hotel to take a rest. It’s interesting how quickly you grow accustomed to such things as having no furniture in your hotel room, just tatami. I split the double with Steph. Our room had a TV, a little table where the teapot was kept and a small vanity with a mirror. Two sets of bedding were on the floor. We rolled this out and then Steph and the others proceeded to get ready for a night on the town.
At 10 p.m. we made our way downstairs. The hotel owner asked when we’d be back. Apparently Japanese hotels frequently have curfews. He said he closed at midnight. I wasn’t worried about this for myself, since I’d just be getting something to eat before returning. The others said they’d return at around 2 a.m. The hotel owner said he’d be sleeping, so he asked that they ring the doorbell and he’d wake up and open the door for them. Another interesting characteristic about Japanese hotels is that you frequently leave your keys with the front desk rather than take it with you. While this is convenient and you don’t have to worry about losing your room key, often the keys are kept in plain sight on the front desk so that anyone has access to them. I guess that’s a measure of how safe Japan is.
Jane, who has been to Kobe before, suggested we first go to this Irish pub called Ryan’s. They would have food there. We found the building and took the elevator up. The doors opened and we were assaulted by a very loud band playing Guns and Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine.” The bar was full of other foreigners and lots of people were speaking English.
I was in front, so I began to make my way deeper in to the bar. Whereas my four friends were quite dolled up in anticipation of going clubbing later than night, I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Maybe because everyone was looking at my friends and it was dark, that’s why nobody saw me and THAT’S why people kept stepping on me or running into me.
Come ON, PEOPLE. I’m small, but I’m not THAT small.
Another thing: It such a weird feeling suddenly finding myself amongst all these gaijin strangers. I haven’t seen that many unfamiliar Caucasian faces since July — FOUR MONTHS ago! — during the JET Tokyo Orientation. I’m using to being around big groups of gaijin, but usually they’re my friends in Tokushima-ken. So it was a bit disquieting to suddenly see all these other foreigners together.
I liken it to about the same way I felt when I came to the University of Texas and suddenly found myself exposed to and apprehensive around large groups of fellow Vietnamese-American students. I had grown up with lots of Asian-American friends at school, but only one of them had been Vietnamese. Not a lot of Vietnamese people lived in my neighborhood. So I had something in common with these Vietnamese-American students at UT, but I didn’t feel like I belonged with them.
Anyways, finding there was no food to be had, the five of us left the Irish bar and went to a Japanese izayaka. I inadvertently ordered bread and just bread for myself, but I wasn’t that hungry anyway, so that was my dinner. At 11:30 p.m. we left the restaurant and the girls went back to Ryan’s for a drink before heading to the club. I went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I’m not really one for loud music or dancing or staying up late. I was glad to find my friends were cool with that.
That night I heard Steph come in. I figured it was sometime past 2 a.m., but I didn’t realize how late until I woke up that morning. I crept into the other room and found Jane and Sally awake. Apparently some of them had come back around 6 a.m. and Jane, not wanting to make the poor hotel owner have to open the door again, decided to come back at 7:30 a.m. in hopes the hotel would already be open. For a girl who’s only gotten maybe an hour and a half of sleep, she looked very awake.
They told me all about their night and about meeting guys from all over. Sally met a guy from Switzerland who didn’t speak English. But both of them were fluent in French and that’s how they spoke. Sarah met someone from Brazil and Steph, a rugby player from New Zealand. Jane met someone from her hometown in England. Three of them had gone to find some food at some point and Sally, in her inebriation, had sent her ex-boyfriend a drunken text message on her phone talking about how the two other girls were passed out on the table. She woke up that morning with horribly dirty feet — the soles were black — and had no idea how that had happened.
About the same time, while we were some green tea and chatting, a voice came over the loudspeaker in the hallway announcing something in Japanese. It was about 9:40 a.m. I went down to find out when the check-out time was. The lady at the front desk told me 10 a.m.! I reported back to my friends. This led to a scurrying to get their stuff together. Two of the girls hadn’t even woke up yet.
I brought my stuff downstairs and waited for the others. I even got to chat with the hotel owner for a bit in Japanese. He asked if I was Japanese. I told him no, I was Vietnamese. (So far, people have asked if I was Japanese, Filipino and Laotian). I told him we were headed to Tokushima, and that my parents lived in America. The innkeeper told me how he’d been very worried about my friends, since they’d hadn’t surfaced at 2 a.m. Four women in the city, very dangerous, he said. I wouldn’t go so far to say it’s dangerous, but I could understand his concern and felt bad we’d caused him to worry.
The hotel owners were so anxious to get us out of their hotel that they started to clean the hotel rooms while some of my friends were still in them, drying their hair or applying makeup. When they finally came down, the innkeeper opened the door for us to hasten our departure. It was 10:40 a.m.
We crammed our stuff into a locker at the station and went in search of sustenance. We found a café place and I had a bagel sandwich. Yummy. We stayed there for a good hour and a half before deciding we’d better get some shopping in while we still could — the bus would be leaving at 3:15 p.m.
Stephanie and I split off from the rest of the group (they were looking at purses and boots and wallets, all of which were things I did not want to get). She wanted to find a second-hand store and I just wanted to see more of the shops. I ended up getting two guitar picks (one of which has Hello Kitty, or Kitty-chan as she is known, on it — I couldn’t resist!) at a music shop and a traveling clothes line at the 300-Yen shop (yes, there is such a thing).
We caught the bus with a few minutes to spare and went home to Tokushima. I really enjoyed my stay in Kobe, but I’m glad I live in a smaller place. But I’ll be back.
Monday, Nov. 17, 2003 — Surprise gift, cleaning the classroom
I got a gift from a student from my other school today. He’s a student in the class I have lunch with daily. He had gone to Space World, some sort of amusement park, and brought back an omiyage (souvenir) for me, a mechanical pencil. Wow. My kids are always surprising me with their kindness and thoughtfulness.
After school I usually pull grass — I mean pull weeds — from the school courtyard. But today Ikawa-sensei had to look in on a classroom because the homeroom teacher wasn't in. I followed and watched the kids clean. Cleaning lasts about 10-15 minutes every day. Most of the students earnestly clean at that time but it's also a big socializing time with kids loitering in the hallways and outside.
First the students put the chairs on the desk and push all the desks to the back of the room. They sweep and they mop the floor. Others clean the chalkboard. Then they push the desks to the front of the room and scour the floors back there. There are big sinks in the hallway where the students clean their hands.
Once cleaning was done, I hung around to hang out with the students in the gym who were playing badminton and table tennis. Some of them asked me if I had any purikura and when I brought my print club stickers out, a pack of girls descended on me like sharks. It was a feeding frenzy and they snapped up my stickers.
Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2003 — Bundled up
I wore four layers to school today. I kept my jacket off, but wore three layers throughout the day. This kept me comfortable the whole time. And it’s only going to get colder.
In other news, I taught with the other first-grade teacher today. She is focusing on the phrase, “What time do you ____ ?” But I guess several of the students had heard about my Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt and they came in flapping their arms and saying, “Gobble, gobble?” to ask if we were going to play the game. Hehehe. I had to tell them no, not today. But Miyata-sensei is intrigued and told them perhaps in the future.
Friday, Nov. 21, 2003 — Curse you, Yahoo BB
No Internet access and no e-mail make Vivi crazy. NO INTERNET ACCESS AND NO E-MAIL MAKE VIVI CRAZY.
Saturday, Nov. 22, 2003 — Now I’ve seen it all
Spray-on hose. That’s right. No need to pull it on. SPRAY IT ON. It comes it two shades of beige!
In related intriguing-product news: I came across loose socks. You know the ones girls like to wear all droopy around their legs, like warm-ups? They're really long. The longest size measured 120 centimeters. That's four feet somehow stuffed into the space between a girl's ankles and her knees. Wow.
Christmas shopping is hard.
Earlier this week I noticed how the girls at my school would walk up the stairs in a really odd way: They pull their skirts tight around their bottom as they're climbing the steps. I finally realized they do this because they wear their skirts so high, they have to pull it in like that so as not to flash their underwear. <sigh> At the same time, I feel bad for Japanese schoolgirls all over because they have to wear their skirts even in the winter. I seriously don't know how they do it.
Sunday, Nov. 23, 2003 — Ink painting and stories of the big and tall
I went to TOPIA for an ink-painting workshop this afternoon. The class was led by Murawasa-sensei, the father of Murasawa-san, a TOPIA staff member. She translated for her dad. They had laid out all these tools for us to use: an ink well, ink stone, water, brush, paperweight and handmade paper. A lot of it is was familiar because I use the same equipment for calligraphy.
Murasawa-sensei first showed us how to paint a gradient of black with one brushstroke. First you swirl your brush around a cup of water and then dab it semi-dry. Then you swirl it in a well of diluted black and dab it semi-dry again. Finally, you dip the tip into the darkest ink. That way, when you pull the brush across the paper, the stroke is darkest on top and fades to a lighter shade at the bottom.
After practicing this brushstroke, Murasawa-sensei showed up how to paint chrysanthemum leaves from different angles. It was hard and most of our attempts looked nothing like chrysanthemum leaves. Then we tackled chrysanthemums, which were much easier. Finally, Murasawa-san passed out some hard cardboard stock with gold trip and we painted our final work on it. But the biggest coup of the afternoon was when Murasawa-sensei gave each of us an ink painting of his own and signed it with his hanko.
The workshop lasted two hours in the afternoon and I hadn’t had a chance to grab some lunch, so I headed over to a sandwich shop near the station. It’s run by two foreigners who used to be JETs and is a popular hang-out among gaijin in the area.
While munching on a burrito and garlic potato wedges (de-LICIOUS), I chatted with one of the owners. He told me about how maybe 20 times a week on average Japanese people stop by to, as he and his friends say, “gawk at the monkeys.” They come in and ask him questions like, “Do you not like Japanese food, is that why you opened this place?” and “Can you use chopsticks?” A lot of times, their curiosity satisfied, then they just leave. Others stay outside and peer inside the glass door with this look on their faces: “So this is what a gaijin hangout looks like …”
The co-owner also had plenty of stories to share about being big and Caucasian in Japan. Inevitably, he said, when he’s at a crosswalk waiting for the light to change, he’ll find the Japanese people standing next to him measuring themselves against his height. When he went buy groceries, he’d notice how old women would follow him around and sometimes even root around his basket. When he finally got to the point where he could ask what they were doing in Japanese, the answer: “I want to know what you eat so I can feed it to my grandchildren and make them big and tall like you!” And finding clothes in Japan that fit him are a lost cause, he said. He waits until he goes back to the United States to visit family and brings along and empty suitcase to fill with clothes he can bring back to Japan.
Monday, November 24, 2003 — Putting my microwave oven to work
In my three years in Abilene, I never really used my oven to bake anything as domestic as cookies or cakes. But some reason, I got the hankering here, where my microwave oven (remember? It’s both a microwave and an oven!) can accommodate no more than nine cookies at a time.
I’d had a little practice the night before at Sally’s. We made white-chocolate-chip and pistachio-nut cookies. They were fun to make, but I think I may have overdosed on sugar. We ate the cookies while watching, “Three Seasons,” a movie set in Vietnam that’s mostly about Vietnamese people (i.e., not on Vietnam vets). I was pleased to discover I could understand what was being said some of the time.
Anyways, today (another holiday) I bought all ingredients for chocolate-chip and pecan cookies. That’s the way my mom makes them. The recipe I’d procured needed baking powder and baking soda but I was unable to find either of them at the grocery store. I shrugged my shoulders and hoped for the best. I bought flour, brown sugar, chocolate chips and pecans. They sell chocolate chips in these tiny 200-gram bags, so I bought three of packets of them.
For my first time, I was quite pleased with how the cookies turned out. I’d reduced the amount of sugar required but they still were tasty, especially when warm. Not as good as my mom’s, but not too bad. In all, I made about 75 cookies, which required about eight trips to the oven. Hmmm … I hadn’t counted until now. That’s a lot of times! I only ate two cookies. The rest, I planned on bringing to school for my teachers.
I learned a little better how my oven works. I set a temperature (in Celsius, of course), but haven’t figured out how to set the timer (if, indeed, there IS a timer …). My microwave oven beeps when the food inside reaches that temperature. It continues to heat after it beeps, but the heating is intermittent rather than continual. For a long time I’d thought that once it beeped, it stopped heating, which led to a lot of frustration.
Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2003 — Medical check-up
All employees of the city office are required to get an annual medical check-up so this morning my fellow ALTs and me showed up at the city office for ours. Among the things we had to do: get a chest X-ray, take a vision test, get weighed and measured for height, get an EKG and get blood drawn. At one point, the medical technicians also use a formula based on your height to determine what you should weigh and then they tell you how off-base your actual weight is.
I had to give three vials’ worth of blood. The needle’s circumference looked intimidating big. When the lady checked my right arm for veins and couldn’t find one, I quickly volunteered my left arm, afraid she would try to stick me before she’d found a good vein. As my left arm, too, was useless, we went back to my right arm. The lady was quite efficient and quick; the prick barely hurt at all.
After all these tests, there’s a quick consultation with a doctor. But given the language barrier, this consisted of the doctor saying things like, “Hearing: okay. Seeing: okay.” My EKG looked rather daunting but he said there was nothing to worry about. I get my results back in three weeks.
I was supposed to go to my second school, Kokufu, today, but was given the afternoon off. I went to Kamona instead to deliver my cookies to the teacher and to have a little conference with one of my first-year students and his teacher. I thought this kid was ill all the time, which is why he always had his head on his desk. But it turns out he was just really shy. That’s why the teacher wanted me to sit down with her and the boy. It was an interesting meeting. A friend of the boy’s came along to act as moral support and two first-year teachers sat down with us.
So I asked him some questions in English and the teacher translated. He kept his eyes locked on the ground, his bangs hanging down. He looked me directly in the eyes maybe 10 percent of the time. I asked him what he thought about class and what kind of activities he preferred. He didn’t like group games. I asked him what subject he liked best. He liked P.E. the most. I asked about his pets. He has a 6-year-old Shetland sheepdog named Sheri. It was the first time I can recall actually hearing his voice. His demeanor, and his voice, reminds me of Shinji from the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The teacher kept asking me if I had any questions for the boy, Ryutaro, but eventually I ran out of questions. As if being cornered in a room with two teachers and a foreigner isn’t stressful enough, I thought, he has to endure questions in another language. So I didn’t want to traumatize him too much. Afterward, the teacher was like, “We should do this again.” Poor kid.
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2003 — Can’t ... feel ... legs ...
Today at Kurohashi-sensei’s we did tea ceremony practice again except this time, I got to try it, too.
After drinking a lot of green tea and eating a lot of sweets during Yoko and Reika’s tea ceremony practice, Kurohashi-sensei invited me to try, too. A lot of Westerners notice how the sweets here aren’t as sweets back home but I’ve noticed that while that is the case, the Japanese eat sweets a lot more. I eat nearly everything that comes my way but I’ve noticed that I quickly reach my fill of sweets.
I really enjoyed doing the tea ceremony but sitting in the traditional Japanese kneeling position — seiza — was pure torture. After a while, it was so difficult to mimic Kurohashi-sensei’s movements because all I could think about was how I could I could no longer feel my legs. It made me kind of panicky. Finally we reached a break point in the middle of the ceremony where I could stretch them out. I stood up and felt such painful relief as the blood made its way back into my lower limbs. Then I had to sit down again and finish the second half, which concludes with three trip from the tea-making place in the tatami room to the next room, where you bring your tools. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to stand up, but was able to do so with a little awkwardness.
Thursday, Nov. 27, 2003 — Listen to this
Ah, Japanese class — where I get to hear Japanese spoken with a Scottish and English accent.
Saturday, Nov. 29, 2003 — English Day
I got to wake up bright and early at 6:30 a.m. today to go to Shinmachi Elementary School, a school near downtown Tokushima, to take part in the campus’ “English Day.” Shinmachi is part of a special English-education program in which teachers focus on the spoken language rather than the written language. The kids can’t read English but they feel comfortable conversing in it.
The rain began to fall sometime in the early morning and by the time I opened my eyes, it was coming down in sheets. I half-heartedly hoped it that maybe it would be over in an hour, by the time I had to leave, but no such luck. So I resigned myself to pulling on my rain pants and rain coat and wrapping my satchel in a plastic bag before I began biking to the school.
I hadn’t thought to cover my shoes, so by the time I arrived at Shinmachi, my shoes and socks were soaked. The sixth-graders had set up a front desk at the entrance of the school and greeted Sally and me with, “Hello, how are you? It’s really raining, isn’t it? Please follow me.” I was shocked. These kids were SPEAKING ENGLISH! Their English was limited but what they knew, they spoke with an ease that you rarely see in Japanese kids. I tried to ignore the squelching of my wet socks as I slipped them into some blue indoor slippers. In the room that had been prepared for us, I pulled on my sneakers instead … I had a hole in my sock and didn’t want anyone to see. You have to wear socks in good condition when you’re in Japan because the likelihood that people will see your socks is far higher than if you were living elsewhere, I think …
Eventually the other ALTs arrived and we went to the gym for the opening ceremony. All events in Japan begin and end with a ceremony. The entire school was in the gym, along with parents. The ALTs introduced themselves, usually by starting with, “Good morning.” It was lovely to gym-full of kids echo us.
After the opening ceremony, we went to our classes. Sally and I had been assigned to the fifth-graders. We had been told there’d be a “culture lesson” at the beginning of the class. I had thought the presentation on Japanese culture would be for the benefit of the parents but it turned out to be solely for Sally and me! In small groups, the fifth-graders showed us traditional Japanese games, which was always followed by, “Vivi-sensei, Sally-sensei, please try!”
The games ranged from juggling with hackey sacks to a quiz on Awa Odori. The kids asked Sally and me to try juggling three hackey sacks and I proceeded to make a fool of myself because I’ve never been able to juggle more than two things at a time. The Awa Odori quiz I made blind guesses because sometimes I couldn’t quite understand what the kids were saying. We also had to try making these wooden propellers fly into the air. I succeeded in accidentally flinging it at different people in the classroom.
One game involved stacking several wooden blocks on top of each other and then knocking the bottom out with a wooden hammer while trying not to disturb the blocks on top. I turned out to be quite adept at this game but in my enthusiasm ended up knocking one of the fifth-graders square in the forehead with a block. The kid clapped a hand over his head and winced as I apologized profusely. He was okay but in the back of my head I was thinking, “If this had happened in America, that would have been a lawsuit-in-the-making as well as meant an end to English Day…”
Then it was our turn to lead the class. Sally and I opened with a song: “If you’re happy and you know it…” and then we played a game where we tacked colored paper on the board. In pairs, the kids would race to be the first to slap the correct color when we called them out. It got a little violent, but the kids seemed to like it. We ended with, “Head, shoulders, knees and toes,” which the students totally liked because we played it this way where every time we repeated the song, we left out a body part so that part of the song was silent until the entire song was done in silence.
Following the “lesson,” we all traipsed back to the gym for more fun and games. The entire school sang “Sing,” a song of The Carpenters. It was sooo endearing to see the youngest students belting out this song. Then the younger grades sang, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” complete with dance. Some students did a cool drumming dance and then the older grades danced Awa Odori for us. Because no event in Tokushima-ken would be complete without some Awa Odori.
Game-wise, we did an introduction game where we milled around the gym until someone yelled “Stop!” Then we played janken (Japanese for “Rock, paper scissors”), introduced ourselves to the nearest person and exchanged name cards. Mine said, “My name is Vivi. I like books, horses, computers, calligraphy and dogs!” A numbers game required us to scramble into groups of the same number called out by the announcer. Another game was one where we had to guess “Yes” or “No” when it came to ALTs likes and dislikes, such as “Do you like sushi?”
For the grand finale, the WHOLE SCHOOL lined up, London-Bridge style, with their arms in the arm in a snaking line through the gym. Guess what the ALTs got to do? We got to crawl through that. It was actually really fun. The kids would keep one arm in the air to maintain the “bridge” and with the other, shake our hands as we crept through.
One bizarre complaint I’ve heard from guy ALTs, though, is the penchant for younger children in Japan to poke them in the rear. It was no different at Shinmachi. Although the female ALTs went “unmolested” through the chain, the guys came out a bit perturbed as to how the kids in front of them would shake their hand while the kids behind them would poke them in the rear as if in a double-teaming effort. (At least it wasn’t the same reception a fellow male ALT received at one of his elementary schools: No sooner had he walked in the door than a student punched him in the stomach and, while he was doubled over, another poked him in the behind …)
Idle prodding aside, I was thoroughly enchanted with the kids at Shinmachi. They were so sweet and eager to use their English. I look forward to next year’s English Day. We were even on the noontime news!
As for the rain … I’m pretty sure it rained for a good 18 hours straight that day. I ruminated over why I am so shocked by its frequency. Then I realized I was coming from West Texas, which is perpetually in drought and where people pray for rain. No matter how hard it rains, the area remains in drought. So it’s weird to go from one extreme to the other.