"So if you're Scottish, does that mean you speak Latin?" and other interesting occurences

Admittedly it has been a fair while since I last updated this blog, but rather a lot has happened: The Hiroshima sake festival, the Yawatahama Teya Teya festival, the Halloween party in my town and my school Culture Festival. 

So starting with Hiroshima, let me just begin by saying that Japanese people do not hold their alcohol well. Not at all. This is reflected in the early ending time of the festival, as to my surprise it ended at 8pm. I initially thought such an early closing time was insane, but by the time 7pm rolled around, Japanese people were completely red in the face, rolling around on the ground, getting into fights and *gasp*, speaking English to me. Despite the fact that 99% of Japanese people will adamantly state that they do not speak English, get a few beers in them and the truth comes out. I myself was a nice level of drunkenness, with no embarrassing antics occurring. The whole premise of the festival is that you pay a set amount to enter, are given a small sake cup (think shot glass size) and get to wander up to every sake booth and have a shot of any sake you choose until they run out. Such a thing would most likely be banned in the UK, since we are all alcoholics after all, but it was definitely fun. My alcohol tolerance has admittedly gone down, as I definitely drink less here than I do back in Scotland, home to Braveheart and drunks. There isn't a whole lot to say other than Japanese men definitely lose their inhibitions when drunk, actually to the point of outright hitting on me (Japanese men are usually far too shy for this). The one thing that surprised me at the sake festival and Hiroshima in general was the huge amount of foreigners I saw. Being in a small town, I hardly ever see any foreigners apart from us ALTs, so I was practically awestruck at the amount of foreigners wandering around. Perhaps this is a sign I'm turning Japanese?

Me with a couple of drunk Japanese guys... haha!

Since it finished so early, we all headed out to a "gaijin bar", which was full of American marines. This was actually my first time dancing since being in Japan, so it was definitely nice to let loose. One highlight was when one not-so-intelligent marine said to me "So you're from Scotland… does that mean you speak Latin?". Nope, I didn't mishear, he actually said that. Well, he certainly wasn't doing anything to prove the "Americans are stupid" stereotype wrong. Though if it makes what he said any better, I panicked that a member of the yakuza was hitting on me since a Japanese guy with a tattoo was trying to dance with me (and badly at that). It turns out that you don't have to be yakuza in Japan to have a tattoo. Though who knows... 

The next day in Hiroshima was spent doing all the must-see touristy things. The first thing we did was hit the Hiroshima Peace Park and museum. It was definitely powerful to say the least. I left the museum feeling depressed and like I was somehow guilty for the atomic bombing. However, it is something that you absolutely must do if you are ever in Hiroshima. This is the peace park:

The Genbaku Dome - still as it was the day the bomb fell

The children's memorial

The flame (although you can't see it here) that will never be extinguished until all nuclear weapons have been destroyed.

In need of a good cheer up, we headed out to Miyajima, a beautiful red gate or shrine type thing that is actually in the sea, so that it appears to almost be floating. This illusion was even greater since we took heed of the advice in the guidebook and went around sunset. Needless to say, it was beautiful. The scene felt rather surreal, added to by the fact that I was still shocked by the amount of foreign people strolling around and also by the deer casually strolling in and out the crowds, trying to steal food from tourists and licking small children. Some people say that Miyajima is Japan's most iconic view. I haven't seen enough of Japan to make a judgement on that, but it was certainly iconic.

Miyajima Shrine

2 deer in a loving embrace

After an exhausting day of sightseeing we headed back into the city and went out for the famous Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is essentially a savoury Japanese pancake with layers of cabbage, egg, squid, meat and basically whatever you want to throw in. Hiroshima style is different from the more typical Osaka style as it also has noodles in it. A truly scrumptious calorific meal! We went to Okonomimura, which is a building with 4 floors consisting of only okonomiyaki vendors. The choice was overwhelming, and quite frankly we had no idea how to choose, but we eventually settled on a place and sat watching the veteran okonomiyaki chefs do their thing. The way they made the okonomiyaki so effortlessly was almost like a work of art. It's the same feeling as watching an extremely talented cocktail mixer make a cocktail. They threw around the ingredients with perfect ease, making it look so easy when I really knew that it would all go balls up if I tried.

The okonomiyaki stall where I ate and the beginnings of my meal

The layers

The finished deal

So that was the main gist of Hiroshima. A very spacious and open city and somewhere that I have to return to at some point.

Hiroshima by night

Just a curious looking building

Next on the agenda is the Yawatahama Teya Teya festival. What exactly it is that we were celebrating, I'm not sure, but it was fun so who cares! I was part of the City Office dancing troupe (troupe? I'm not sure what to call it, we just kind of danced in a group). In very Japanese fashion, they had several practices for a dance that was just 3 very simple moves repeated over and over until we grew sick to death of it. On the night we got to wear a traditional Japanese happi and were treated to lots of beer and food before the actual event. We even got to meet Hamapon, our city's mascot! Everyone was already merry and drunk by 6pm before we even set off.

Me in a happi holding the mikan mascot of the prefecture

Hamapon!

Unfortunately it was raining, so the little sock things I had to dance in got soaked within 2 minutes, but it was all in the name of good fun and a truly Japanese experience. In front of our dance troupe the men carried a mikoshi, which is an extremely heavy portable shrine. Though to me it more looked like a boat with lots of tinsel and sparkles on it. We danced for 45 minutes, gradually making our way around the town centre. My students and other people waved at me excitedly, probably in awe at seeing a white girl in a traditional Japanese get up. I don't know how many strangers have pictures of me, but I'm sure that it must be a significant number. I even "won" a medal for my "excellent dancing". By that I mean that they gave me a medal because I'm foreign. Yep seriously, this is Japan. Whilst the downside is people may stare a lot, the perk is that 95% of the time you get given first class treatment.

We also did a second revolution round the town, and this time I got grabbed, put into the mikoshi that was being hoisted up on the shoulders of about 20 men and bounced around in it for a few minutes. I'm pretty sure being bounced around in a shrine is one of those once in a lifetime things that can only happen in Japan. I definitely felt blessed to be given the opportunity to experience being at the centre of a Japanese community. Whilst I may be a city person at heart, there is something special about living in a small place because it is so much easier to get right into the heart of the community and experience the real Japan.

The night was rounded off with a party at the city office which involved a lot of beer and some very drunk Japanese men. One man who I have never talked to in my life actually stopped dead in the corridor and hugged me. Believe me when I say that this is an extremely rare thing for a Japanese person to do, so it's safe to say that he was probably hammered beyond belief. Eventually we all ended up at a snack bar, where everyone drank more and I saw to my complete awe, a Japanese woman eating ice cream with chopsticks. Yes, that's right! And no one else was blinking an eye at her. It was as if she was a living caricature of a Japanese stereotype that I had never actually seriously thought to be true.

I'm afraid that this is getting quite long, but there is a lot less to say about Halloween (which I am aware has not actually occurred yet, but this happened to be when the party was) and the Culture Festival. For Halloween, I finally found myself at an actual bar in Yawatahama. And it was full of foreigners! I am aware of the fact that this was a special event just for Halloween and many of them live in a different town, but I never realised that so many people from the Phillipines live in Yawatahama. It was great to dance, drink cocktails and talk to strangers in English! I dressed up as a witch from MacBeth for the occasion, the MacBeth part being that I was wearing a tartan kilt I found in a second hand shop. I'm probably now going to be all keen and force my friendship on these people simply because they speak English. But such is the way of life in the Japanese inaka.

The next day was my school Culture Festival. I have to admit that I was feeling rather rough, but this was more due to an actual cold rather than alcohol consumption. To my relief I wasn't actually expected to do anything other than sit and watch. The kids put on some pretty amusing plays (that I couldn't understand, but they seemed funny) and sang some songs together as a class. But the best part was the dances that the kids came up with themselves. My particular favourite was a boy dressed as a girl seducing all these dancing old men (14 year old boys with bald caps, don't worry), and then the girl whipped off her (his?) wig and it turned out he was actually an old man in disguise (also with a bald cap, don't worry). It was a great day, and I really do wish I had had more energy, but c'est la vie.

I've certainly nattered on enough so I am going to leave you here. Till next time!

"Hey, let's eat a pregnant fish" and other adventures

I’m afraid that these blog updates are becoming less prompt as time goes on, but I will try to keep up with doing them every couple of weeks. This may be due in part to the vast variety of Japanese hobbies that I seem to have taken on. So far this includes Japanese cooking classes, ikebana (flower arranging), karate and next week I will be giving tea ceremony a try! This doesn’t even include the yoga that I do and the various JET meet ups and so on…

Karate is the newest addition to my “hobbies”. I just tried it out properly a few weeks ago. My style of karate is called Shorinji Kempo. Never actually having done “normal karate” (does that even exist?), I’m not actually sure how they differ, but my supervisor told me it is more theatrical in style and more like a performance. This seems more like my type of thing than the judo I witnessed at Sports Day when I saw some tough looking boys literally hurling each other to the ground without even uttering a sound. That certainly killed my curiosity to try out judo since I’m a rather dainty girl.

Not really knowing what to expect, I went along to karate. It turned out that the majority of the class consisted of children. Some even as young as three! The warm-up was tough, but after the copious amounts of fried food and noodles I’ve been eating here, I certainly need that extra shove. I was slightly embarrassed when a 10 year old girl managed to beat me in the one of the warm up races when we had to crawl along the floor worm style. Though in my defence, it’s been years since I’ve done anything like that! I also couldn’t manage to get my legs into the zen style (crossed legs but with feet up on the opposite knee), when all the little kids and all the adults seemed to be able to do it. Oh well, they say practice makes perfect.

After the warm up and various back and forths across the room kicking and punching the air saying “Hya!” (I swear, it’s more organised and impressive than I make it sound) we were put into groups. Much to both my relief and slight embarrassment I was put into the white belt group, which obviously was made up entirely of young kids. Still, it was fun and I will be returning. The children were literally having a field day at the sight of a white gaijin girl desperately trying to keep up with everyone else.

When Japanese people say they have a hobby, they don’t quite mean it in the same sense as you or I. When we have a hobby it’s something we do for fun every now and then when we’re in the mood, but for the Japanese a hobby is to be taken almost as seriously as a job. Which explains why everyone else at karate is miles better than me since they are pretty damn dedicated to the sport. Still, I intend to stick with karate at least for the duration of my stay in Japan as long as it’s feasible. It’s even tougher for kids and their after school clubs, which run every single day after school, even on Saturday mornings. Sometimes I wonder how much the kids really do enjoy their “hobbies”…

Anyway, onto more light-hearted topics! A couple of weeks ago I went to an overnight beach party in Niihama, organised by a subsection of JET who run events in Ehime for us English teachers. To put it briefly, this involved a lot of alcohol, barbequed food and night time stealth-swimming. What is stealth swimming you ask? Well for some bizarre reason, despite it still being the middle of September and around the 30 degrees mark, the beach had decreed that swimming was “out of season”. So naturally we just waited until it was dark so that they couldn’t see us. Though it honestly gets dark here around 6pm so we didn’t have to wait long. Much to everyone’s relief, no one got stung by jellyfish, unlike the year before, so luckily there were no conundrums of, “Okay, so who’s going to pee on the sting then?”. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves greatly and have a very merry time, probably aided by beer, tequila, Strong Zero, wine and whatever else happened to be on offer. By the way, Strong Zero is lethal! It’s essentially an alcopop that tastes lemonadey and positively harmless, but for some reason just one is enough to get my head spinning. Be careful, or as the Japanese say “Ki o tsukete!”.

The next day, I went on a mini road trip along with two other ALTs. The first stop was at a highly refreshing waterfall which was definitely a good shout for getting rid of the hangover. That was, until I saw a water snake and suddenly didn’t want to be in the water anymore… We later made our way to the Shimanami Kaido bridges, spanning 70km from Imabari on Shikoku, where I live, all the way to Hiroshima on the mainland. The bridges were, simply put, absolutely stunning. The bridges all connect a series of islands, and when the sun begins to set and the haze sets in, it creates a mystically beautiful view. Unfortunately my computer won’t let me post a picture, but you just have to trust me. This may sound odd, but Japanese hills are a different shape from any hills I’ve ever seen. They seem more defined and dramatic somehow, rising up from the surrounding landscape very deliberately. The next view I saw was also absolutely amazing. As the sun was setting, it literally turned blood red and huge, to the point where the sky actually looked like the Japanese flag. The land of the rising - or in this case setting – sun indeed. I should write travel brochures or something. After such breath taking sights we were back in the hustle and bustle of Matsuyama city and I got to eat my first proper Indian curry here, which by the way, was considerably spicier than I had expected, given that Japanese food is never spicy. Still delicious though. After all, I am a good British girl that can never turn down a great curry.

Despite being very tired, I can never resist travelling to a new place, so the next day I set off for a town quite close to me called Uchiko, home to another JET. Uchiko is a very quaint town and still very much preserved in the Japanese traditional style with lots of listed buildings. We originally went to watch a kids sumo wrestling tournament, which quite honestly was brutal at times. Japanese children are tough! Several times a scrawny little boy was put up against a huge fat kid, who simply flung him out the ring as if he were just a rag. Though I have to say, some of the scrawny little boys did put up a good fight. Sometimes I feel like the Japanese can be rather masochistic at times! What with all the excessive sport and lack of regard for injuries.

Whilst in Uchiko we also tried out some rather exotic ice cream flavours ranging from pumpkin, to sesame seed, to sweet potato to green tea. Green tea ice cream has become a new obsession of mine! Sweet, but still very refreshing.

Just the past weekend I was in the neighbouring town of Ozu, having a movie and pizza night at the house of another fellow ALT (I know, I know, I should probably try to hang out with more Japanese people but the language barrier is a bit of an issue..). We were literally fed until we were stuffed and sleepy. To say that pizzas are small in Japan is a massive understatement, but despite this we were still full from the sheer number of pizzas. And just to top it off, the next day we had homemade waffles with syrup and yoghurt before setting off for a girly shopping trip to Matsuyama, which involved more food and ice cream. Food is kind of becoming a common theme here, I’m beginning to think I should go on a diet..

But food is a very important thing to the Japanese, similar to the Italian take on food. Food should be enjoyed fully and in the form of a proper sit-down meal, rather than us Brits who like to rush around stuffing sandwiches into our faces. However, the Japanese are sticklers for never wasting food, and this is evident in the school lunches when kids simply have no choice to force whatever horror may be on the plate before them, even if this is a pregnant fish. And yes, that is a food that exists in Japan. It's called shishamo, look it up if you don't believe me ;) Yes, I was confronted with it the other day during a school lunch, but I managed to slyly give it away to some students who were more enthusiastic about eating it.

Anyway, that’s all for now. My next blog update will most likely entail my adventures to the sake festival in Hiroshima, so stay tuned kids!