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| The Japanese Christmas cake that I tried |
Despite the lack of emphasis on Christmas here, I have been getting somewhat into the Christmas spirit. I have been dressing up in a little Santa dress and hat for my Christmas lessons at school. Usually the kids just yell "Santa-san!" at me and try and steal my hat, but I think they appreciate the effort. Ironically, I felt most Christmassy at the ALTs' Thanksgiving party last month. I donned my kilt for the occasion, since we had the dinner on the 30th, which also happens to be St Andrews day, the patron saint of Scotland. It's safe to say that this is multicultural exchange as it's best: wearing a kilt for a Thanksgiving dinner in Japan. The dinner itself was amazing! The girl hosting it was lucky enough to be one of the few people to own an oven in Japan, so we had a turkey, enough potato to feed an army and more pies than a pie shop, as well as all the other dishes that people brought. Pretty sure I've never been as full in my life as I was that night. We ended the night with a giant sleepover!
Whilst I haven't done any travelling to other prefectures in the past month, I have spent a fair bit of Matsuyama, the biggest city in Ehime.
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| Dogo Onsen, the inspiration for the onsen in Spirited Away |
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| As above |
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| A chairlift up to Matsuyama castle |
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| View of Matsuyama |
After that visit I went back again for the ALT skills conference. The evening of the first day, most of the ALTs had a giant enkai. Shots of sake were done out of giant soup spoons, and to make a long story short, I woke up the next day still drunk, feeling like I would rather not exist and trying not to remember the embarrassing fragments of the night before. To make matters worse, I still had another day of the skills conference to go. But I'm of the opinion that a hangover is self-inflicted so I don't have the right to whine about it that much.
That evening, pure chance would have it that me and my friends get bombarded by a TV camera crew whilst sitting in a sushi restaurant because they had brought in a giant tuna fish and wanted to film it being cut up and turned into sushi. Of course, being a table full of foreigners, they simply had to film us eating it and going "Mmm oishii!" in unison. This is clearly the beginning of a brilliant film career for me.
And if that wasn't enough fame for me, I was also recently made to pose in a mikan farm for a New Year's edition of the local magazine, whilst they asked the usual Japanese questions of "What type of man do you like?" That's right, you better start forming a queue for my autograph.
My next visit to Matsuyama was actually a visit to an orphanage organised by the local ALTs. Although I signed up to the event too late to actually be able to buy a present for a kid, I did get to dress up in my Mrs Claus outfit again and give out sweets to the kids, whilst helping with the Christmas activities that had been set up. And my most recent visit to Matsuyama involved a giant buffet, making friends with both foreigners and Japanese at the local gaijin bar and the typical giant sleepover that seems to be a common part of social events in the JET community.
Life is pretty damn cold here. It's around the same temperature as Scotland right now, but it feels so much colder because you can never fully escape the cold. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in the 50s, as central heating is basically an unheard of concept, insulation in buildings is non-existent and the girls in my junior high schools are not allowed to wear tights under their skirts. I feel awful for them whenever I see them shivering in the hallways. In the evenings I'm either hiding in my bed with my glorious electric blanket or hugging my space heater. I find it difficult to believe that this is the same country as 3 months ago, when it was nearly 40 degrees and so much humidity that clothing just became a nuisance.
But alas, I'm not going to complain about that because I feel like I have been really starting to find my feet this past month. I definitely feel more of a connection with my students these days and last week I felt like even the JTE (Japanese teacher) who I usually consider to be quite frosty towards me was starting to warm up. The only sad part is that I won't see much of my junior high 3rd years after Christmas because they will be on exam leave and then heading off to high school in April.
I feel more like a part of the local community as I'm being invited out to more things by Japanese people. I think a big part of this is the shorinji class (a type of martial art) that I take. Despite the fact that I'm pretty damn terrible at it, lots of the members have been making an effort to invite me out to things and get to know me. One of the kids who is only about 4 or 5 years old started wanting to learn English after I joined and has since been shouting out random English vocab at me whenever he sees me. Ridiculously cute and very impressive considering his age.
At my shorinji enkai I was made to do karaoke for the first time, much to my reluctance. I have attended karaoke before, but always managed to get away with never singing. Singing in front of a roomful of people is as appealing to me as going to the dentist, but they still cheered appreciatively even after I butchered Twist and Shout. This was then followed up with "Challenge! Challenge!" as they thrust cups full of sake at me and gawped in amazement as I downed them. The woman who worked in the karaoke bar then followed this up by giving me a palm reading in which she claimed I will be happy in May, but very unhappy in August and that I must fight through it. Hmm... I don't tend to believe these things but I can't help but feel a little nervous.
All in all, after a bit of a rough start and not quite being used to living in a small town, I feel like it's all starting to fall into place. My Japanese is still terrible but gradually getting better. I recently cycled out by myself a few miles to the end of the peninsula. The beauty and peace I have encountered and continue to encounter every week in Ehime has given me a new appreciation for living closer to nature.
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| The end of the peninsula |
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| And just because it's Ehime, here's a giant mikan made out of mikans |
It's clear from all the stares I get that Shikoku may not be the most obvious of Japan's four islands for a foreigner to be, but this is part of the Shikoku charm. I really feel like I am living in authentic Japan. My presence here definitely gets noticed, and I hope that perhaps it makes a difference to the people around me too, particularly my students.
That's it for now, but over Christmas and New Year I will be doing a great deal of travelling, so you can be sure that I'll have way more stories to tell then.
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