At the Dentist

I decided to brave the dentist. Having heard positive things about the dentist from Nicole (another JET in Hagi) I chose the "Dental Office Tojo", heartened by the English name really! Inside there were 4 cubicles, for 1 dentist, and about 7 dental nurses/hygenists. Basically the dentist goes from one cubicle to the other and does the work he is qualified to do and then he goes to the next cubicle and the nurse or hygenist does her thing - x rays, teeth cleaning etc. It is really a pretty smooth operation, though the dentist must change gloves a hundred times a day!

The other thing, Japanese dentists are really cheap. I was there for an hour, had 3 x rays and had my teeth cleaned all for less than $30. Actually, another JET had her silver fillings replaced with white ones for $6 per tooth!

The dentist's office has some cool equipment. Each seat has their own little TV so I watched Happy Feet (in Japanese) for a while, then the dentist stuck a light wand/camera in my mouth and took som photos. He showed those photos on the screen, and then he put my x-rays on the screen too! However, it is a little weird that you can hear everything going on - not that I understood it though. When they raise the seat up (before they lay you back) you can almost peer over into the next cubicle.

The dentist speaks a little english - if I speak slow enough - and I managed to explain that I have a low pain threshold. I think they think that if they touch my teeth too hard I will scream in pain. Not that that is a bad misconception, I suppose it means that if they want to do anything major then they will anaesthetise me to the eyeballs!

Happy Birthday to me

(Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday dear me, Happy Birthday to me)

Well, in Japan birthdays aren't important. Basically they don't have parties, cakes or presents really. Often, they aren't even acknowledged. For example, I was out with a friend on friday night and she said it was her husband's birthday but that he wasn't invited out with us for dinner! So last Monday my celebrations were fairly limited.

I woke up a few mins early to open the cards and presents that had come from Aus (thanks everyone) but that was the most celebratory moment of the day! 1 teacher knew, and wished me "Happy Birthday" and then that night at my Japanese class (the informal conversation one where I go to a family's house) we had cake.

Each day, for the rest of the week, a card arrived in the mail, so it was good to stretch my birthday out! Finally, I had a small party last night. We went to a new Okonomiyai restaurant down by the beach, where you can cook your own, or they will cook it for you. The family used to have a restaurant in Hagi many, many years ago, and they are famous for their snowcones. I had a coffee flavoured one, and Carla had cocoa and milk! Mel's maatcha (green tea) snowcone had a red bean cake in it too.

After dinner we went back to Carla & Melody's house where we had birthday cake - Carla had made a chocolate volcano cake (as in the middle had kind of exploded). It was also my Ikebana teacher's birthday, and another friend's birthday (Yuka) during the week, so it turned out that the party was half guests and half birthday people!

41,360

That's how many convenience stores (Conbinis) there are in Japan. That number sounds high, and mathematically, it's about one Conbini per 3000 people. However, in Hagi there are about 7 conbinis (so that's 1 for every 750o people) and in smaller places there are even less conbinis per person.

When you walk around Tokyo or Kyoto you see where all the 'extra' Conbinis are, so when I read an article on Reuters which talked about efforts by the Kyoto Government to convince Conbinis to close overnight I was really surprised/horrified. Apparently the Government thinks that it will improve the views over the city, and reduce carbon emissions. The carbon emission argument seems futile to me - I mean, the shops will still have to have all the fridges and stuff on inside. I will be really surprised if the Government wins this one!

Teaching English to Students who actually understand!!!

Last Saturday I went to an 'academic' high school to help out with an English seminar. It was a real pleasure to 'teach' students who understand a bit more than "how are you?" and "how's the weather?"

Though, I use 'teach' loosely - we played a lot of games, all in English, and then had to cook lunch. As the main JET at that High School is American we were cooking an 'American Lunch' - hamburgers and rice crispy treats (which I think are kind of like the LCM bars you can buy in the museli bar section in Australia).

Hamburgers were easy - I had no intention of using my hands to mix the meat, but I was perfectly happy to let all the kids have a go AFTER they had washed their hands (I did have to eat the hamburgers eventually). The school had ordered in proper cheese - cheddar that tasted really good, not plastic sliced cheese, and we had some other salad fillings to put in the burgers. Someone joked that it was almost a balanced meal, and thus not really American... but I did explain that we weren't aiming for Maccas style burgers.

The rice crispy treats were easy to make - melt butter and marshmallows, stir in cocopops or rice bubbles - but aren't something I would hurry to make again. After all, Kelloggs makes a perfectly acceptable alternative.

After lunch we had a treasure hunt. There were 12 English clues to follow and then a sentence to de code. My team wanted to run - EVERYWHERE!!! Lucky I did that fun run training or I would have died! We actually managed to finish in the hour allotted - a feat only managed by another team - but came 3rd overall for the day.

The whole day ran smoothly, in fact I think they do the same thing every year, not that you would have known that from how stressed the English teacher was. In the week leading up he kept emailing us with all kinds of requests/suggestions. He wanted us to bring water because it would be hot (and apparently they don't have taps at the school), then he wanted us to bring towels in case we became sweaty, and finally he asked us to clip our fingernails for the cooking exercise.

Now, as many of you know, I have been a terrible finger nail biter forEVER. I am currently in a non biting stage, and have even been wearing bright nail polish to school and no one has asked me to take it off! So as you can imagine, I am quite enjoying having long fingernails, and was not about to chop them off! So I took off the purple nail polish and just tried to hide my hands all day - and as mentioned I didn't stick my hands into the hamburger meat!

Aah, Japan

Today I saw a grade 4 kid limping out of school at about 12 - before lunch. So I asked where he was going - I didn't think he was about to skip lunch, (a) he's a kid who says he is always hungry and (b) he's japanese, but I was a little worried about a little kid just deciding to leave school for the day. No, he was WALKING to the hospital because he had hurt his leg. Logical, ne???

New Bike Rules

The new bike rule in Hagi:

"Where there is a footpath, please ride on it. Where there is no footpath, please ride on the road"

What on earth was the old rule????

I love the Post Office lady

On Friday I went to the main post office in Hagi to send a box of stuff home - a BIG box of stuff. I must say that most of the stuff is either not for me or boring winter clothes.

[Side note, I hate Australian airlines and their luggage limits. I was/am only allowed 20kg so Geoff mailed me my winter gear]

So I dragged my supervisor up to the Post Office - firstly I needed a car to transport the box and secondly I thought some language assistance may also come in handy. The box I had packed my things in was too big for the post office, so I asked my supervisor to tell the Post Office that I would run over to the hardware store and buy a smaller box and then return and repack. But then the Post Office lady pulled out her knife and started making the box smaller - given that the top was a little empty - and she managed to make it small enough to be acceptable!

I love the Post Office lady...

50yen

When Geoff and Xav were here we went to one of my favourite cafes (Cafe Tikal) for a Hagi mikan cappucino! When Geoff was getting out his money to pay and he dropped 50 yen. We moved the cushions and the chairs around trying to find it, but we didn't try too hard given it is about 50c (Australian). Of course, the owners saw we were shuffling about, so I explained why. We didn't find the 50 yen coin, but no problem.

So that was in March. I went back to that cafe a couple of weeks ago (the first time since I'd been with the boys) and the Manager came over when she saw me, and handed me 50 yen - they had found it, and had waited more than 2 months for me to return so they could give it to me.

Someone's trying to tell me something...

There is a mini shoe shop set up in the staffroom! That's right, I came back from the lunch room to find a little old man setting up shoes for us all to try on... I think it is a message: "buy shoes... buy shoes...!" Not that I need an excuse!

Or was this the cover of the local newspaper?

This is the reinterpretation of the Hagi local newspaper. Just in case I didn't stand out enough...

Carla's Birthday

It was Carla's birthday about a week ago. In honour of that event, and my upcoming birthday, we both received letters inviting us to take a 'cancer test'. That's all the Japanese I could read on the letter, and Carla couldn't shed more light. I voted to toss the letter out.

Seriously though, she had a birthday party to celebrate. We started off with a dance party at her house, and then moved onto the bar on the beach for its monthly reggae night. Melody even made a cake with mix she had sent over from the US.

The reggae party was fun - though the music was kind of strange. Listening to japanese words sung to a Bob Marleyesque tune.

Stalking or Love?

On Friday I was at school, eating lunch and attempting conversation with the teachers. I say attempting, because the English teacher who eats lunch in the staff room is SO SHY that she sits as far away from me as possible, so I bumble along, mangling Japanese & English in an attempt to be sociable/make myself understood.

All of a sudden the school principal comes in - he had just received a special delivery, an early copy of the local newspaper. He was so excited because on the front there was a version of 'Where's Wally' - this time, spot the foreigner. That's right, there was a street shot from the Old Fashioned Festival, and there I am, front and centre.

All the teachers were oohing and aahing over it, but I was so unimpressed. I mean it's bad enough playing live Where's Wally in the supermarket, with kids stopping and staring, and people taking notes on what is my basket, but stealth photography of me being published on the front over... bloody Japan!

Summer!

The Japanese make a lot of the fact that they have four distinct seasons - as if it was something unique to them. I have tried to explain that all 4 seasons exist in all but the equatorial counties! In my mind, the problem with the concept of 4 seasons in Japan is that there is no warm up - it changes from one season to the next ON THE DAY it is supposed to. For example, when I went to Bangladesh it was Winter, and when I returned it was Spring, and 10 degrees warmer. The sudden change was exceptionally terrible last December, however I have posted copiously about my problems with Winter!

Now, it's time to move on to Summer! Today it's June 1st and it was 23-25 degrees at about 11am - fantastic. I'm ready to hit the Hagi beach many, many times. However the weekend just gone I went with a big group of Yamaguchi JETs to go and play soccer against some other JET teams, and some Japanese teams too.

We headed up to Shimane prefecture (the prefecture immediately above Yamaguchi) on Friday night, and stayed at the Little Swiss Cabins. There were 8 of us to a cabin, which were on the top of a mountain, looking out over a beach. Of course, we partied on Friday night, but the tournament organisers had thoughtfully given us a late start (just in case we had decided to drive the 4 hours from Hagi to the tournament on Saturday morning).

The boys were playing regular soccer - full size pitches with 11 players per team. They lost both games - which is the standard, though they did score a goal this tournament (a feat they did not manage last September). Our girls team were playing on small pitches (definitely less than half the rize of a regular pitch) and only 6 players per team. I played goalie in the 2nd half of our 2nd & 3rd games - and no one scored against me!

As we were playing 6 a-side we had special rules - no offsides to begin with, and a whole bunch of rules to 'simplify' the game for us. In the end, all we had to remember was not to touch the ball with our hands. We won our first game 4-0, and then at the end of the 2nd game there was some dispute as to whether we had lost 3-2 or 3-1. So we had to take penalty kicks - luckily Steph was the goalie and she saved so many, but it the end we lost the penalty kicks 1-0 (after each team had taken 11 shots at goal each). This meant we played the 'bronze medal' game, and won 2-0 or 3-0 (not sure).

Of course, after a long day playing soccer we had to party! This time, it was with all the other teams who had played in the tournament. There was a mountain of food, a Japsican (Mexican + Japanese) band, and then an African drummer. The kids all went to bed, and it turned into a dance party where Monica and I befriended a Japanese soccer team - all boys who studied Geology at Shimane University.

Finally we went to bed, and way too quickly I was being woken up for my ride back to Hagi!

(On a side note, my camera is being temperamental and I am having trouble uploading photos from my camera so once it starts behaving there will be photos on facebook for those of you with access)

How to make Japanese girls squeal (louder than usual)

Making J girls squeal is not that difficult... hello kitty figures, purikura (sticker photos) and photos from Bangladesh have all done that job in the past. However, today's squealing was slightly unexpected.

In class today we were writing our diaries (I got up at 7am, ate breakfast etc) and at the end of the class the students each had to ask me a question. For some reason 1 girl asked me "what time do you take a shower" and when I said "sometimes in the evening, sometimes in the morning" the kids started squealing. Then I was asked "Do you wash your hair everyday?" and I said no, I wash my hair 3 times a week and that caused more uproar. I couldn't figure out a way to explain that my hair is now long because I am too nervous to go to the hairdresser in Hagi in case I end up with hair only 2 inches all over my head!

Finally the last question was "What fragrance is your shampoo treatment?" I answered lemon, and luckily the bell went because the kids were squealing - "remon, remon!!!!" like I was crazy!

The earth shook!

Wow! I just experienced my first earthquake. Things shook for about 1 1/2 mins... nothing broke or fell over though!

The Old Fashioned Festival?

Firstly, I had Ikebana, just by myself with Kiyoko. It was fun, she was crazy as per usual. Afterwards she asked if I was free. As I was, and usually it ends up being fun with her, I followed her onto a shuttle bus and ended up in the port area of Hagi. We walked up and down the streets, ate ice cream and that was about it. There were displays of old machines, old soy sauce barrels, and some old rice growing utensils... what a weird idea for a festival. Even stranger, it was packed... Seriously have no idea what it was for. After about 40 minutes we left.

(photos to come once i get back to Hagi)

Friday Ramen Club update

Each Friday, after we eat our ramen, we fill out the little customer feedback forms. Not that we entirely understand all the questions, but we do have a routine of what to circle, and know the katakana to write to say what we ordered, and our names, addresses and phone numbers. As a reward for filling out the forms, every so often a customer wins Y3000 ($30) to spend at the ramen shop. My friend Eriko, has managed to win twice in 2 months! Carla, Melody and I are super jealous, and are beginning to get a complex about never winning! Especially for the other 2 girls - given that they have been going practically every Friday for 9 months! That's not to say that the store is anti-foreign, they are really friendly to us, and have come to expect us being loud in the back corner! Also, Eriko always ends up using her voucher to buy gyoza or something like that for us all. It's just that we think the store owners are probably too freaked out to call and have to deal with our rubbish Japanese!

Congratulations Eriko!

My brief encounter with fame!

I was on Mishima this week at the same time as a film star! Some random old Japanese film star called Kiyoji Nakajo. He apparently is a singer and an actor. I have no idea what they were filming or why they were on a dinky little Island in the middle of nowhere. The dude wanted to tell me about his house on the Gold Coast, but the only English word he knew was "Gold Coast"

Then after my encounter with the star I took the boat back to Hagi, and it was the worst boat trip I have taken! I was worried that the boat was going to tip over or something. This photo was taken through a window in the middle level of the boat.

They love me... they really love me

I have schools that tell me to go home or hide in the kitchen if there are guests, parents, or postmen expected! If there is a surprise ambush by a courier then they hurry me into the cupboard under the stairs, or close the door of my classroom! Now, this isn't at every school I teach at, but it happens often enough to make me realise that I am a scary foreign alien!

So when the Mishima JHS English Teacher started telling me about a special class in June, to which parents and other teachers are invited to attend, I was expecting her to tell me that she needed to cancel my visit for that day. Imagine my surprise when she said she would write up a plan for the lesson and send it to me, for my suggestions, so we could run the lesson easily! That's right - she wants me to TEACH in the open lesson. Whoa! I asked her if she was sure, and she said yes, she thinks it is important for the other teachers/parents to see a proper English class with me!

Actually, down at the Elementary School they have a noticeboard for the parents/community, and on the board are the dates that I will visit! Actually acknowledging my existence...

Seoul baby!

For Golden Week (a public holiday bonanza in Japan) I went to Seoul for 5 days with some other JETs! Daniel, in Tokuyama, mentioned he was arranging a trip, so I jumped on board and took advantage of all his planning! We headed to Seoul for 5 days, from early Friday morning (a bus from Hagi at 6.10am) until late Tuesday (returned to Hagi at 9pm). It is hard to say what the highlight of the trip is, given so much of it was FABULOUS, and really there were very few low points.

To begin with it was super easy to get around with all English, and a little Japanese. It seemed that everyone spoke English, or some Japanese. Kids were super genki (keen) to speak to us in English, and helped us find the famous foot long ice creams! We obtained food either by pointing, or reading the multilingual menus (Korean, English & Japanese seemed standard), and in taxis we would just say the station name to get near to our hostel.

A major highlight was our day tour to the DMZ. We visited a train station from where you will one day be able to take a train to North Korea, and it will connect with the transiberian railway, then we went to an obsevatory tower, from which we could see North Koreans going about their daily business - farming. Then it was on to the 3rd tunnel. That is, the 3rd tunnel dug by the North Koreans, after the cease fire agreement had been signed, to infiltrate South Korea. Luckily the North Koreans had super shoddy equipment so the South Koreans had plenty of time to find it, once they had been tipped off to its existence! There is a monorail that you take down into the tunnel, then you can walk about 200m along it, until you come to the dynamite blockades, separating the South and the North even 300m underground.

Lunch time, amazing Bul Go Gi (a Korean beef dish) and then we jumped on board an all English bus. In the morning the bus was half Japanese tourists, half English tourists, so there were 2 guides. However, in the afternoon we had a bus full of English speakers. We also had the cutest tour guide who was "nervousing" about taking a group into the United Nations Command area, because of all the restrictions, and the danger. Actually, when we entered we had our passports checked thoroughly (the earlier checks by Korean soldiers had been cursory at best) and then had to sign a waiver acknowledging that we might die! The 2 major rules were no pictures, except in designated spots, and no pointing/hand gestures. The no pictures thing was easy - there were plenty of soldiers watching us to make sure we didn't take any sneakily, and our guide was always telling us exactly where we could take a photo from. The hand gesture thing on the other hand... Lucy suggested we do a Prince Phillip (and keep our hands behind our backs) but then Amy kept asking me where things were, and I almost pointed twice - I swear she was trying to make the tour more dangerous! She did apologise profusely, but...

So the DMZ tour was 1 day - Saturday, and then on the other days (Friday, Sunday, Monday & Tuesday) we did some sightseeing and shopping in Seoul. There are 5 palaces in Seoul, and I went to 2. The first one is the Deoksugung, which is where the biggest changing of the guards ceremony occurs. It literally happnens on the curb of a major road, outside the front gates of the palace. So while all the tourists are crammed in tightly together, the traffic roars on by obliviously. Deoksugung is a small complex, where most of the buildings are 'Asian' but there was a very European building - I suppose the King saw photos of a European palace, and decided he wanted a similar building.

The other palace, Gyeongbokgung, is much larger. They have a small changing of the guards ceremony, and an area where people can get dressed up in traditional costumes, which I took advantage of! In the compound there are many buildings, and even more are in the process of being restored. We also took a trip in the cable cars, up to N Seoul Tower (no idea what the N stands for). The cable car ride was a little lairy - each time we went through a set of pylons the car sped up and wobbled a bit. Also, the car was very full, so it was hard to move around and look at the views. At the base of the tower, which is set on a mountain, there was a laser and water show, which looked pretty amazing. The view from the top was pretty good - though at night, from above, it can be difficult to distinguish one city from another.

Unsurprisingly we did a fair amount of eating. We ate loads of kimchi - which comes free at every meal, and many chijimis (Korean pancakes, usually with kimchi, spring onion and squid inside). Korean chopsticks are made from metal and are long and flat, so they are much more difficult to use than the regular wooden ones. Luckily, Koreans like to eat rice with a spoon, so that made the whole thing more manageable. We had some kimchi gyoza (dumplings filled with kimchi) and they were so good - an amazing combination of Chinese/Japanese and Korean. While we ate Korean food most of the time, it was so good to be in a big city with all of the range, so we had Vietnamese for lunch one day, and went to a TGIF one night for dinner.

Also, as Korea is so cheap, we did some shopping. I bought toilletries - because they have English instructions on the back, unlike in Japan where I have to guess what the product is and how to use it! They had stall after stall of cheap shoes, though I remained strong and didn't buy a single pair!

I also took a trip to an onsen for the first time. An onsen is a hot bath, and they are very popular in Japan. You go into a communal wash room and have to scrub yourself from top to toe (though you can choose not to wash your hair, and then just keep it tied up whilst you are in the bath), then you go an sit in the bath. Lucy, Amy, Tasha and I went to a 24 hour onsen, where in the women's area there were 3 baths of different temperatures, and a sauna, which was 85 degrees celcius! In Korean onsens you can pay extra and have an old Korean lady scrub you down. Apparently the scrub is amazing, but she looked a little terrifying! Lucy & I laughed over what it must be like to spend your work day in only a pair of knickers!

Seoul is actually quite beautiful - it never really suffered bombings like the ones in Japan which has resulted in concrete block buildings all over the major cities in Japan. It is also a fair bit louder than any Japanese city I have been to. I suppose that is not surprising, Japanese people seem to be the quietest and shyest people I have come across, so when you are in a big J city it is still very quiet, relatively speaking. Seoul had an amazing nightlife - one night we went to see a show, so didn't end up eating dinner until around 10:30pm and we found a really great place still open. I am definitely keen to go back, and stay at our hostel (Stay Korea) which was just like a converted house, and the owners were so helpful and friendly. We chose a perfect time to go, there were a couple of festivals going on, so the city was specially decorated, and plenty of activities to go to. One night we saw a variety of performances in Seoul Plaza, where they had 3 stages set up, and as the lights went down on 1 stage, they would come up on another to reveal a new performer.

All credit for the organisation must go to Daniel! It really was an amazing trip!