Two Months, One Post

Hisashiburi.  (That means 'long time, no see' in Japanese.) 

So, once again I've neglected this thing in favor of reading and Netflix (but I'm really enjoying NPH in A Series of Unfortunate Events!).  Where were we?  November?  November.

I can remember three things that happened in November, so that's what I'm going to blather on about.  First was Ros' mom coming to visit.  She was here for a couple weeks, bopping around the country with Ros, and I was able to meet up with them for a day in Arashiyama (the place with the bamboo forest near Kyoto that I went to back in April).  The weather was gorgeous, so we got to walk around without being rained on or getting super gross and sweaty (I'm Canadian; it happens here even in November).  We saw the bamboo forest, did some shopping along the streets, and had some pretty good food.  In the evening, we took the scenic train ride around some of the mountain area, which was illuminated at night so that we could view the fall leaves.

Yeah, fall leaf viewing.  That's a thing.  See, Japan has a lot of trees that stay green and keep their leaves year-round, and not just conifers like at home.  We've got palm trees over here.  Not many in my area, but they do exist.  So the leaves changing colour is a thing of beauty that people actually take time to go see in specific places that have large quantities of Japanese maples.  This blew my mind when I found out that it was a thing.  My supervisor was like, "Mel, where do you view the fall leaves in Canada?"  And I'm like, "....Uh....my front lawn?"  I had to explain that the majority of our leaves change colour and fall to the ground in Canada, and that no one really cares except the people who have to rake them or children who want to jump in large piles of them.

The second thing I remember was one of my lessons.  At the end of November, I taught what I refer to as my "Princess Bride" lesson.

 

For exactly the reason you see in that image.  There are a lot of loan words that are used incorrectly in Japanese, for a number of reasons.  So I decided to do a lesson on it, just to show my kids some of my confusion in Japan as an English-speaking foreigner (and also loan words was a section in their textbook; I wasn't just pulling this out of nowhere). 

 

First we went through the activity in the textbook, where they had to match the actual English with a picture of the loan word and the Japanese-written loan word.  So they matched "super" with "supermarket," and "key holder" with "key ring" (which I explained we also call "key chain").  But after that, I got into the really crazy ones.  Some of my favorites:



Consent - In Japan, this is the word they use for a power outlet.  Apparently it comes from "concentric plug," a phrase I have never before heard in my life.
Mansion - In Japan, probably the vast majority of people live in apartments.  Many of those apartments are in small buildings, like mine.  "Mansion" in Japan refers to the huge apartment complexes.
Stove - In Japan, it's a large gas space heater.  So a foreigner might complain about how cold their apartment is, and a Japanese person might respond, "Don't you have a stove?"  And we're all thinking about a cooking range, so that would get really confusing.
And my all-time favorite:
Viking - So, we all know what a Viking really is.  Big dude, horns on helmet, likes Thor (stereotypes, I has them).  In Japan, "viking" means "all-you-can-eat buffet."  ....I can just feel the looks you're giving that sentence.  Right?!  Research tells me that this is because the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was the first to offer this kind of dining, and they called it a "viking smorgasbord" after the Kirk Douglas movie "The Vikings".  And it just kind of snowballed from there.

And that was my lesson.  I really enjoyed the reactions to some of these.  You could just see it in their faces.  "Why the heck do we use this word for this?!?!"  Of course, after that I had to throw in one of the reverse.  I showed them what English-speakers who don't know about Japan think "futon" means.  Because for most of the people I know, a futon is this:

But really, "futon" just refers to the mattress part of it.  A traditional futon actually looks like this:

The last thing that happened in November was that once again I ran in the teachers' relay at the end of the month.  This year, though, my high school was the one to approach me first, so I ran with them.  That was a lot more intimidating to me, because we were only running the longer course, and I'm at a sports-centric school where 5/7 of the relay team is comprised of gym teachers.  And they gave me the anchor position, because it was the shortest run (700m).  Oh god.  On top of that, there were no English-speaking teachers on the team, and I was getting a ride with one of the gym teachers who lives near me, so I had to really rely on my (practically non-existent) Japanese skills.  It went fine, though.  I actually felt really good when the winning team's anchor crossed the finish line before the sixth runner from our team had even come back to me.  All the pressure was off, and I just had to focus on not being last (which we weren't; we were in the top half of the competitors).  One of the Home Ec teachers had come to observe, and brought steamed pork buns and pork miso soup for us all to eat after the race, so we got to enjoy some hot food in the park before heading home.

At the beginning of December, I got loaned out to another special needs school that's about 45 minutes' walk away from where I live.  I'm still not completely sure why, but whatever.  It was really interesting to me, because it's so different from my regular special needs school.  My regular school is kind of an interim school for kids receiving treatment in the hospital next door (and is also responsible for the inpatient kids at the university hospital in the city centre), so while they're attending lessons with me at this particular school, they're still considered students of whatever school they've taken the exams for and been admitted to.  The one I went to in December is for permanent special needs kids, and it's more of what we would think of in Western countries as special needs.  A lot of these kids are wheelchair-bound, non-verbal, or things like that.  There's a huge number of staff there, basically no more than two students to one teacher, and those teachers will accompany those students through their lessons, regardless of whether or not it's their lesson.  I'm not sure I explained that right, but it's the best I can do.  Anyway, it was really interesting to see the kinds of support these kids get versus what they would get back home.

Then Mary and I ran around USJ, because I wanted to get some shopping done there, and also because I wanted to see the magical Harry Potter Christmas tree (which was actually kind of disappointing in real life).  I made us scarves for our houses, which I'm super proud of, especially because I finished mine on the train ride there.  (Why yes, I am a procrastinator, why do you ask?)  I've talked about USJ before, so I'll just add that the Christmas stuff that we could see (some of it sadly had technical difficulties that day) was really cool, and the seasonal food was delicious.  Some of the Christmas music choices were a bit odd, though.  I still hate Michael Buble.

After exams I had one round of lessons left with the first year kids, and one conversation class out of my three (the other two ended up being scheduled for when I was lent out to the other school).  So I started out doing the same thing with all of them: teaching them The Twelve Days of Christmas.  Dear lord, there are a lot of birds in that song!  It's ridiculous.  And one of the teachers kept trying to take it seriously and I had to be like, "Dude.  No one gets these presents for real.  It's not a thing.  And I can't tell you the meaning behind it because no one knows for sure."  But the kids enjoyed it, probably because I had pictures on the board for each of the lines, and the last verses of the song had me running around the front like a madwoman.  Since my conversation class is a double period, I used the second period to introduce them to A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Snoopy and Woodstock are really popular here because they're cute, and the Peanuts characters exist at USJ, but the students don't really get that there's actually a source material for this.  They actually come from somewhere.  The characters in the cartoon talk kind of fast sometimes, so I made a small sheet with fairly basic questions about things that they could see, or that were very clearly said, like:
How much does it cost for Lucy's help?
What three animals does Lucy ask Snoopy to be in the play?
What colour tree is Charlie Brown told to get?
And so on.  The students really seemed to enjoy it, so that made me happy.  Plus I got to watch Charlie Brown. 

I can't really recall anything else of interest that happened before I left to spend the holidays back in Canada, so I'll end there.  Happy New Year, everyone!

Culture Festival, Year Two

It's that time of year again!  You may recall my post last year about the school culture festival.  Well, we started off this year's festival on Wednesday with the guest performance.  We all made our way to the cultural center in the city to see an A Capella group who are apparently kind of a big deal.  Like, they've won competitions and stuff.  Or so I'm told.  I couldn't read the information sheet we were given about them, nor could I understand them when they introduced themselves onstage.  But they were pretty cool anyway!  Here's one of their Youtube videos, which is nowhere near the quality of seeing them live:

Thursday was the student performances, but they didn't start until noon.  The schedule was full from noon right until the end of the day at 4:15, so a really early lunch was required.  I got a lift to the cultural center with one of my JTEs, and we had a really nice lunch at a cafe in the center with the Home Ec teacher.  I had a fabulous fried chicken breast that was stuffed with plum (ume) and a Japanese leafy green called shiso, as well as my first taste of natto!  Normally foreigners hate natto because it's really smelly and has a strange sticky texture; this was very unusually prepared natto, as it was neither of those things, and it was actually pretty good.  It kind of reminds me of chickpeas, I think?

The performances were pretty good.  The brass band was awesome as always, the Japanese harp club played a medley of The Mickey Mouse Club March and It's a Small World that was stuck in my head for at least 40 minutes after, and all of the first year girls did a dance together that was kind of cool.  One of the homeroom classes did a Romeo and Juliet performance where all the dudes were played by girls and all the girls were played by dudes; weird, yet mildly entertaining. 

Saturday was the main event, which meant it was a working day and I had to be at work all day.  But "work" here means "following the Japanese teacher who sits across from me (Matsui-sensei) around while she takes pictures of everything for the school newspaper" and "eat food and play games."  So the way bunkasai works at my school is thus: the third year homerooms each run some kind of food tent in the courtyard, and the first and second years do random stuff; some did performances like I said before, others run game rooms, haunted houses...  Basically anything that they can pull together in the timeframe they have (which I don't actually know).  Naturally, I had takoyaki for lunch from one of the tents because it's my favorite (I love these kids, even the ones I don't actually teach but still say hi and bye to me every day, but that wasn't really good takoyaki).  The homeroom teacher for one of the classes decided that Matsui-sensei and I deserved free food, so we got hashbrown patties that were pretty good. 

The first classroom we went to had carnival-style games.  Scooping goldfish is a very traditional Japanese festival game, so they had set up one of those games.  There was no way I was going to try that; I have a hard enough time trying to catch my fish when I have a normal net, never mind the flat paper scoops they use in this game.  Matsui-sensei went for it, though!  She managed to get one fish before her net became too saturated and broke. 

They also had a shooting game, with different value targets set up along the wall that you had to shoot a rubber band to knock down using a gun made from chopsticks and other rubber bands.  Matsui-sensei managed to knock down one of the #3 targets (#1 being the big prize and #4 being the smallest prize and therefore the largest size target).  I... got consolation candy.  I hit a #3 target on my first shot, but it didn't fall down. 

Another class (which we visited but didn't participate in) had turned the entire room into a giant board game, complete with cardboard box dice that you had to roll.  I'm not really sure what all the different spaces were, because the only one I could read was "start", but it looked really cool!

We stopped by the tea ceremony club and had tea.  It wasn't busy in there at all (there were only three people in there apart from us), so when we were done, the teacher who runs the club convinced me to go up and learn how to traditionally serve Japanese tea in a ceremony.  It was...nerve-wracking and exceedingly difficult.  You'd think, "Serving tea.  Anyone can do that, right?"  WRONG.  There are so many steps and certain ways to hold your hands and there's this cloth you have at your belt that you use to hold the kettle and you have to fold it a certain way that I could not for the life of me figure out.  My hands just don't move that way! 

I served the tea to one of the tea club members, who told me it was very good, but there's a high chance she was politely lying through her teeth.  Matsui-sensei took pictures for me, and then as we're leaving after, she says, "I was in the tea ceremony all through high school and university."  Greeeeeat.  So there was another person who was legitimately qualified to judge me.  (Not that she did.  She's super sweet and we had fun together all day, but still.)

After we'd visited all of the different activities in the classes, we hid in the air conditioning of the staff room until we had to go back out so that she could take photos of the dance performance at the end of the day (the same performance they did at the cultural center, but out in the school courtyard instead of on the stage).

And that was bunkasai 2016!

Term One, Part One

I've been remiss in my postings again.  You really shouldn't be surprised.  I'm kinda flaky like that.

So we're reaching mid-terms for the first term of school, and it's been a lot busier than last year!  With the lack of guidelines for my first year classes, it's taking a lot longer to plan things out than it used to when I was using the textbook, plus I have my two new double-period classes to contend with.  But so far it's been alright!

I decided that my first years are going to learn an English song each term, to help with pronunciation.  Hopefully the rhythm of the music will help to lure them away from the horrifically syllabic katakana English.  This term we're learning "We Are the Champions."  Most of the students seem to be enjoying it, but some days it's difficult to persuade them to actually SING after we learn a new section of the song.  Mostly that portion of the class is me standing at the front of the room, singing my heart out alongside Freddie Mercury while my students watch and smile.  Thanks, guys.  I feel the love.  Now how about we participate?!

Working with my second and third years is interesting.  I'm using the same textbook and materials for the two grade levels, but their skill levels are .... I don't want to say vastly different, but vastly different.  It's a nightmare sometimes, trying to come up with things that won't bore the hell out of my third years, but that the second years can actually grasp.  I nearly bashed my head off the table the first time I tried to play Pictionary with my second years (they've since figured it out and now enjoy it).

In the last week of April, I got a chance to explore a place just outside Kyoto called Arashiyama.  It's your typical mountain tourist village with a giant shrine (that is also a World Heritage Site, though I'm really not sure why as it didn't seem any more impressive or important than any other shrine I've been to), except that it's also home to a giant bamboo forest!

 Bamboo! So much bamboo!

 "Watch out, there are wild monkeys here!  Don't do anything with the monkeys.  Whatever you wanted to do with the monkey you find, just don't.  Don't even acknowledge the monkey.  No."

 Temple gardens!

At the beginning of May was a three-day holiday known as "Golden Week".  I persuaded Ros to come down to visit me, and together we travelled to the seaside to risk our lives in a field.  Not even kidding, though we didn't know at the time that it would be so potentially hazardous!  So here's what actually went down, before anyone starts to panic: We went to Hamamatsu for their festival (aptly named Hamamatsu Matsuri) on May 3rd, the first day of Golden Week.  There are many things that happen over the course of this festival, but the biggest part of it is kite-flying.  I know what you're thinking.  Lame, right?  It's totally okay to think that.  That's what I thought when Ros first suggested it.  "We're going to watch people fly kites all day?  And this is... fun?"  So I googled it.  Turns out, it's more like Battle Royale: Kite Edition.  Basically all the neighbourhood communities in Hamamatsu are flying their kites in the field and trying to take down the other kites.  And these kites are HUGE.  Like,  probably a good 7-10 feet squared?  With hundreds of meters of thick hemp rope for a string.  It takes teams of people wearing gloves to fly these things.  So the kite festival thing is actually massively epic.  Which is cool.  Except that you, as an observer, are walking around the same field as these people who are flying kites with the purpose of knocking other kites out of the air.  Ros and I were nearly brained with a giant kite three times, and nearly run over I don't even know how many times.  But it was great!  The kites were really cool to see, and we got in a nice walk along the beach, plus festival food.  I also got a sunburn, thanks to the lovely temperature and the clouds clearing in the afternoon.

 Kites!  Kites everywhere!

 One of the neighbourhood kite-flying teams cheering themselves on.

 A kite, for scale.  Please note that this kite is twice the height of that man holding it.  And these were plummeting out of the sky towards us.  Sometimes more than one at a time.  Good times!

After we'd had enough of dodging lethal flying paper (and wood frames), we headed back towards the station for more food and laziness until it was time for the night parade.  We wandered around for a ridiculously long time, only really knowing that we wanted something sweet, before deciding to chill at Baskin Robbins for a bit (pun intended).  Then we found some kind of international food festival thing for dinner.  I had a lovely steak and fries, and Ros got some meat on a stick and cheese buns.  We hung out at one of the festival tables and listened to a brass band from one of the local middle schools, and then headed up to stake out spots for the parade.  Essentially, each neighbourhood that had a kite flying during the day had a luminous float at night and they all marched in a really, really long line.  There was a break in the parade at some point, so we decided to get a head start on our trip home.

On the Wednesday we were supremely lazy.  We watched movies, ate nachos, and sat in the park with books so that we could be lazy and still enjoy the glorious weather.  I got to introduce Ros to a bunch of rather odd movies that I nonetheless enjoy, including Repo: The Genetic Opera and Fantastic Mr. Fox.  We had originally planned to hike the Nakasendo trail on this day, but that involved a lot of traveling that would begin before dawn, so we basically said, "Hell to the no," as soon as we found that out.

Thursday we decided to muck about in Nagoya, since Ros would have to leave for Tokyo from there anyway and she hadn't really been around the city since our first trip there in 2010.  We wanted to find our favourite restaurant from that trip (which sadly no longer has our favourite item, their house-made ice cream, on the menu), using only our memories and my vague sense of direction (which should NEVER be followed, ever).  I also wanted to show Ros the observation platform-type thing outside the Prefectural Arts Center that I'd seen when I was there the month prior for Jekyll & Hyde.  We went up, it was awesome, I potentially got even more sunburned (even though I was actually wearing sunscreen that day).

After that, we decided to go back and visit Nagoya castle again, because it's kind of really awesome.  They had opened up the part that had been under construction while we were there before, so we got to see some new stuff, too!  It was really cool, because it had all these paintings of tigers everywhere on gold-painted doors, and when we asked the employees, they told us that the restoration crew used the same paint-making methods and materials as the original construction.

We did, as you can tell from my earlier comment, manage to find the restaurant after that, mostly thanks to Ros' sense of direction.  We didn't eat there, though.  Instead we headed back to the train station and found a really great place that served us quite a bit of food for how reasonably it was priced!  We had to part ways after that, so I headed home to crash.

Since then it's just been more of the same classes.  I really think I'm used to most things now, and that's why I'm blogging less.  I'm not seeing as many things where I think, "Whoa, I have to tell people about that!"  This week was exam week, except Friday, so I have classes to teach tomorrow.  But after that is the weekend, and I'm taking myself to USJ for my birthday. I'm going to Hogwarts!

Pre-School (As in before school, not the building full of tiny terrors)

Once again, this is something I forgot that I do.  The following was written on April 11th.  I just... didn't post it.  Expect my write-up on the first couple weeks of class by next weekend!

The welcome/farewell party last night was certainly interesting for me.  It was a lot more formal than the year-end party (calendar year end, that is, not school year; technically this was the school year end party).  Mostly we ate while people were speaking.  The party was about two hours long, and an hour and a half of that was speeches.  I`m not exaggerating about that.  We had the opening speeches from the MC and the principal, and then there was a few minutes of socializing/eating.  Eating continued to happen throughout the night, because it was, like, a 6- or 8-course meal and we didn`t really have much of a choice if we wanted to actually eat anything.  After the social bit, our four teachers who were retiring came to the stage.  One of the current teachers gave a speech about each of them, after which each retiree gave their own speech.  And let me tell you, these people could talk.  I have no idea what they were saying, but they were saying quite a bit of whatever it was.  After those eight speeches were done, we had another few minutes to socialize while they rearranged the chairs onstage.  Then they called up the teachers who were transferring to other schools (there were 11, I think?) and each of them gave a speech.  More socializing while the stage configuration changed again, and then all of the new teachers were called up.  Thankfully, they only went through their names, and then one of them made a speech on behalf of the entire group.

You`ll all be shocked to find that I actually did some socializing during the socializing times.  You`ll be even more shocked when I tell you that only some of it was in English.  I wasn`t lucky enough to end up at a table with an English teacher, so I had a halting conversation with the (biology? math?) teacher beside me, mostly about food and mostly in Japanese.  Then one of the PE teachers came over to visit him, and ended up conversing with me as well (also in Japanese), asking where I had been in Japan, and where I wanted to visit next.  During one of the breaks I went to speak with the English teacher who transferred out, the bio teacher I used to chat with who also transferred out, and the new English teacher who transferred in.  I got a bit of a surprise when I was approached out of the blue by our new math teacher.  She`s studying English on her own, apparently, and wanted to say hi and ask if she could come and speak with me sometimes.  Uh, obviously! 

The rest of the week was pretty standard.  I continued to mostly not do work, except for the brief meeting I had to discuss my conversation classes with the two JTEs I`ll be working with (I still haven`t really had a meeting with my first year teachers, but that`s par for the course, really; I think I`m just used to it now). 

On Friday, though, we had our first day of school, which meant an assembly for the returning students in the morning, and the entrance ceremony for the incoming first years in the afternoon (it`s a big deal, apparently; everybody`s parents were there).  It threw my JTEs for a loop when they asked me about entering high school in Canada. 
"You don`t have anything like this in Canada?" 
"...No.  On our first day of school, we just.... kinda show up?  And our homeroom is posted on the wall, and we go there?"
"But the new students who are there for the first time?"
"Yep.  We still just show up."

Saturday was awesome.  I went into Nagoya to see Jekyll & Hyde at the Aichi Prefectural Art Museum Theater and it was amazing.  I knew all the songs and the basic plot already, being the utter nerd that I am, and I`m not terribly concerned with the nuances.  The performers were great, especially the guy playing Jekyll and Hyde and the woman playing Lucy.  The costumes were standard period musical fare; nice, but nothing crazy spectacular.  The set and the lighting, though...  I was floored.  And they just kept doing new things with it.  Every time I thought I had a handle on what they could do, they pulled something new.  My favourite was the first time we saw Jekyll`s lab.  Until this point, we`d seen him writing in his journal in his drawing room, so I expected we`d eventually see that desk covered in his potion equipment, but no.  As he`s singing This is the Moment, he moves up to the second level of the set (because safety), his drawing room glides offstage, and from behind a scrim comes  the lab.  It`s this hulking split-level piece, with a worktable covered in potions at the bottom, and big mechanical...thing with two levers up the small staircase.  On the back, mounted above all that, is a circular vent with a fan that is easily about 12 feet high.  Then, still singing, he dismounts the main set stairs onto the lab set, goes up to the mechanical things and yanks on the levers.  The desk lights up as though the liquids in the bottles and test tubes are luminescent themselves (like a particularly well-lit bar shelf), and the fan starts turning.  Like I said, I was floored.

My first year teachers (two out of three, anyway) came up to me today and basically said, "We`ll have a meeting when we can, but we want to have fun communicating in English, so you`re in charge and we`ll just do what you say."  O...kay.  Wow.  Like, no pressure or anything, right?  My first class in on Thursday, so we`ll see how things go.  I`m just going to do my self-introduction stuff, though, which I`ve done before so at least it`s familiar material.

Tick Tick... Boom! (Most of You Don`t See What I Did There)

So, this past week there was a bomb threat against the Mie prefectural government.  I don`t know a lot of the details, because I haven`t bothered to Google.  The only reason I even know about it at all is that my school is governed by the Mie Board of Education, and is therefore a prefectural property, so the teachers had to search the school for strange objects/bombs.  I got the short, translated version from my supervisor, after the news was delivered by the principal, but apparently the bomber stated that the bombs would go off on February 24th at 3:34PM.  That`s a strangely specific time.  And there are a LOT of prefectural buildings in Mie.  It`s likely this has something to do with the Summit being held in Ise in May, so there`s a chance the threat isn`t even coming from someone Japanese.  I suppose it`s rather callous of me to even think about it, and shows how incredibly desensitized we`ve become as a society to such threats of violence and terrorism (or maybe it`s just me), but all that`s really going on in my mind is, "What does a bomb threat from a Japanese person even look like?  I mean, the Japanese people as a culture are very formal, polite people...  It must be the politest, most apologetic bomb threat ever."

For those of you who are now panicked about my safety (Yes, you, Mother), I would like to remind you all that Japan is still probably one of the safest countries in the world, and that this is a very irregular occurence.  Also, I survived York University.  Which sits on the Jane-Finch corner.  And Disney gets a good few bomb threats that the public never really hears about (for obvious reasons).  I appreciate your concern, because it means you care about me, but I`m fine.  Seriously.

Today was my last day of classes for this Japanese school year.  I`ll miss my first and second period classes from Friday because they were awesome, but good riddance to my fifth period class!  ...Okay, I`m kidding, they`re sweet kids, but seriously, they don`t talk.  Even to each other.  It`s terrifying.  I`d say you could hear a pin drop, but you couldn`t because the room is carpeted and that`s why they won`t let us put a heater in the room, but that`s a whole separate issue...  Anyway, I thought I`d share some of my last homework gems.  I`ll be getting more next week, since I only assigned it to some classes today, but I have some of the earlier ones on my desk now.  So this assignment was to complete a chart in their textbooks about World Heritage Sites.  They had to choose a site to research and give its name, the date it was named a Site, its location, and two facts about it.  Most of the students wrote about either Mt Fuji or Himeji Castle, one class wrote almost exclusively about the monuments of Old Nara, and then I got this one:  Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.  Good for you, kid!  Branching out!  Googling!  One of the fact points, though, is...  I`m really not sure what`s happening here:
"Pope Benedict XVI came on November 7, 2010 and held mass and I poured holy water in a temple of Confucius and did sacring, and in Sagrada Familia, it was with Bali deer."

...

Yep, just let that sink in for a minute.

What does your mental image look like?  Because mine has the pope standing beside a Japanese kid (who was obviously not actually there and they`re not using the right pronoun), pouring water into a shallow metal bowl at the altar of a temple while a bunch of deer stand on either side of the temple.  And they`re anthropomorphic deer, so they`re standing on their hind legs.  And wearing priest robes.  And holding incense sticks. 

But why are the deer Balinese?  And what are Balinese deer doing in Barcelona?  Is there even a type of deer specific to Bali?  (I Googled it - there`s no such thing as a Balinese deer.  However, West Bali National Park is home to Javan Rusa and Indian Muntjac deer, and the Javan Rusa is technically native to Java, Timor, and Bali.)

Unrelated to anything else, I would like to take a moment to express how grateful I am that Japan embraces the lesser-known and not-as-popular musicals that no one likes but me.  I have a love of somewhat obscure musicals.  Not all of them, obviously, because some of them are obscure for a reason (they sucked) and no one should ever perform them again.  But some of them are fantastic!  An ad showed up on my Facebook last night out of nowhere for a revival production of Jekyll & Hyde that`s going around Japan, and I basically freaked out like the strange fangirl that I am and sent the link to Ros so that she could read it all for me.  She`s going to help me buy a ticket tonight.  She also found me a Japanese production of the German musical Elisabeth that`s going to happen in the summer, and I`m so stupidly excited about that.  I haven`t seen a Musical That No One Likes But Mel since the London touring company of Chess came to Toronto back in (I think?) 2011.  (I`m 99% sure I was the only person in the balcony who was there on purpose, and not because it was part of the subscription and therefore already paid for.)  Now I just need to convince someone that people would love to see Tanz der Vampire remounted, because there are few things as entertaining as hearing Total Eclipse of the Heart in German.

(A note for the people who don`t get it but want to: The title of this post, "Tick Tick...Boom!", is the name of a musical that no one performs by the same guy who wrote Rent.  So it`s a reference to the bomb, as well as an obscure musical.  Get it?)

Mochi, with a Pinch of Stardust and Potions

FOR MAUDLIN INTROSPECTION, BEGIN READING HERE.

So this week sucked.  Not because of anything going on here, mind you.  Life here is the same as usual.  But the world lost two great artists, David Bowie and Alan Rickman, within a few days of one another, and that`s a sad thing.  Both of these men were very much ingrained into my teenage years thanks to Labyrinth and the Harry Potter films, and while we still have those, it`s an incredible downer to know that these men will no longer dazzle us in new ways.  As I said to Ros last night (before I vowed never to check my Facebook or Twitter before bed ever again, because upsetting news before you try to sleep just makes it worse), if someone else dies shortly or one of my unwed celebrity crushes gets engaged, no amout of ice cream will fix this.

That comment really made me stop and question myself for a few minutes (well, honestly I`m still questioning).  Normally, I have all the emotional capacity of a Vulcan nearing Kolinahr.  The only emotions I achieve easily are frustration and anger (excitement, if a Disney park is involved).  Most of the time I`m just this five-foot package of almost Zen-level contentment, emotionally neutral.  I laugh easily, sure, but I don`t have ...  Hm.  I don`t have a lot of deep attachments, I guess is the best way to put it?  Either positive or negative.  So when I actually feel really upset about the deaths of these two people whom I was familiar with only because of their work, whom I had never met...  It just seems really weird and out of character for me.  Then I think about all the other times something like this has happened, and how I was affected then, too.  Why am I so hung up on these people who I have never met, will probably never meet (the live ones, more of the celebrity crushes, I mean; obviously I will never meet the dead ones)?  Objectively, I get celebrity culture and the way it works.  It stems from fantasy, escapism, things like that (Woody Allen`s The Purple Rose of Cairo does a great job of demonstrating this).  But to find myself wrapped up in it to the same extent is just... odd.  I mean, I live for fantasy, and I spend more time in my head than I do in the real world, but...  No, maybe that`s exactly it.  Maybe I`m more attached to fantasies, to people I have no real connection to, because I spend more time with them than I do with real people around me in the real world.  Huh.  That`s... somewhat depressing, and perhaps a little scary.  Maybe I should work on that.

TO SKIP THE MAUDLIN INTROSPECTION, BEGIN READING HERE.

Leaving my introspection behind (if I ignore it, it`ll go away), the rest of this week has been pretty awesome.  Saturday was grocery day, nothing particularly exciting there.  On Sunday, I went to Ise because they were doing some New Years-related activities all weekend.  I was interested in seeing the mochi pounding event because mochi is everywhere at New Years in Japan, and I`ve heard many people over the years talk about mochi pounding. 

For anyone who has seen Big Hero 6, this is Mochi:

But the cat is actually named after a traditional Japanese food.  Mochi comes from mochigome, which is a very sticky rice.  So basically the rice is cooked, and congeals, and then is ceremoniously pounded into a paste and then shaped, usually into a small ball or dumpling-type shape.  The texture is probably somewhere between a prepared bowl of instant oatmeal and a balloon.  It also doesn`t taste like much on its own, because it`s just rice, so it`s usually filled with something, coated in something, or served in something to make it palatable.  Most common are mochi filled with bean paste, mochi with kinako (soy flour, with a taste that very much reminds me of butterscotch or peanut butter.  I`m moderately obsessed with it), and mochi in sweet red bean soup. 

So back to Sunday.  I arrived in the folk village in Ise in time to catch the end of a taiko drum performance, which was really cool.  I love listening to these drums. 

After that, I meandered the shops for a while, and headed over to the shrine for a visit, and to pick up the hamaya. Literally, hamaya is "demon-breaking arrow", but basically it`s a charm to ward off misfortune and attract good luck in the shape of an arrow.  It usually also has a charm with the Chinese zodiac animal for that year.  So I did all of that, and made my way back to the village area to see if I couldn`t find this mochi thing.  I hadn`t seen the events schedule when I was there for the drums earlier, which turned out to be because I was standing right in front of it with my back to the stupid thing.  When I got there, I had just missed the last demonstration (they were finishing the line of people for free mochi), but there was another one starting in a bit less than an hour.  So I grabbed a steamed dumpling from a vendor (I think it was pork, but it might have been chicken; all I know for sure is that it was delicious) and took a seat near the front of the pavilion to wait.  My friend Jaclyn kept me company through the wait via Facebook messages.  As the performers/mochi pounders were setting up, one of the men from the group was looking through the audience and choosing children to come up and participate in the mochi pounding.  This was awesome, and adorable, and I was excited to see the tiny children using the giant mallet because that would be even more adorable...  And then he saw me.  Me, the lone, pasty, dark blond/light brown haired foreigner right near the front of the crowd.  And I was chosen.

Mochi Guy:  Please.  Please come. *gestures*
Me: Uh...  *deer in headlights look*
Old Lady Next To Me: Go, go!  *giant smile on her face on my behalf*
Me: O....kay?

So I pounded mochi.  I wish I had some good pictures and video of the professionals, but it was difficult from where I was standing at the side of the stage with the small children (and let me tell you how awkward that felt).  You`ll have to make do with a YouTube video of the process. 

(PS, this is actually the group I saw, just in a different place.  The old guy turning the mochi and handling the water is the one who called me out.)

But because I was obviously alone there, one of the other guys in the group offered to take photos for me when it was my turn.  I`ve heard people say it`s really difficult to do (pound mochi, I mean, not take photos of me).  I didn`t find the actual motion of the pounding difficult.  My problem was trying to keep a proper rhythm up with the song they were singing and the man in the front, whose job is to reach in and turn the mochi between pounds.  On a regular day, I have all the rhythm of a drunk, deaf chicken.  With a heavy mallet in my hands and a hundred unfamiliar eyes staring at me?  Yeah, that clearly wasn`t going to happen.  But no one died, I didn`t send the mallet flying, and I didn`t seem to do worse than any of the small Japanese children, so I`m calling it a win. 

The mochi we pounded was then served as two different flavours.  The first (which I originally thought was bitter green tea, but according to my supervisor is some kind of local seaweed variety) was gross.  I already don`t like mochi very much, and adding to that some nasty kind of water plant?  Not cool.  Plus it was green.  The second piece, though, was kinako, and that was alright (see aforementioned obsession with the stuff).  Overall experience? Pounding mochi is fun, but I still don`t like eating it.

Monday was a holiday already (Coming of Age Day, to celebrate all of the people who have turned 20 in the past year), so I relaxed, did my laundry...  Normal boring weekend-type things.  On Tuesday I was at the hospital, where I taught the kids about New Years in Canada.  Which was extremely underwhelming to them, I think, because we don`t really do anything, you know?  Not like here, with all of the tradition and gravity they have.  I brought pictures I found online from downtown Toronto, showing the rink at Nathan Phillips Square, and the fireworks at midnight, but I had to explain that that`s not really a normal thing outside of big cities, and that my family doesn`t really do much.  I also had to explain that there aren`t traditional New Years foods in Canada (obviously, though, I`m partial to a New Years pizza).  I told the English teacher at the hospital, Itou-sensei, about my adventure in Ise, and she said I should have tried it in the red bean soup!  I nearly threw up a little at the thought of it.  She also said that it`s apparently popular to put in minestrone in place of noodles.  This is a much less disgusting thought, but I`m still going to stick to noodles, thanks.

Wednesday and Thursday were not particularly exciting.  I`m working on a special project that I`m not allowed to talk about yet, but it mostly involved sitting quietly, and being paid to read or knit.

I didn`t have any normal classes today, since it`s my first day here this week, and my lesson for next week is already planned.  The topic is a bit dense (the Great Sphinx, and the damage being caused by the rising salt water table), so I want to wait to see how well they do with this lesson before planning the next part of it.  I had my first lesson for the students going to Australia in the spring today.  We covered what they would need to know to clear Customs and Immigration (my specialty!  Yay!).  We have seven students going, plus the art teacher who doesn`t really speak English (I have extra lessons scheduled with him, starting at the end of the month, so that he can at least read through his introduction speech when he arrives). They seemed to enjoy the lesson, which was good.  It was straight from the traveling-student-textbook, though, so it didn't really require much prep from me.  But having a tiny class like that, where they're all genuinely eager to learn because the need to use it is imminent... Yeah, that was pretty great.

And that`s about it.  I might go back to Ise again this weekend, because they`re doing lion dances in the folk village, but I probably won`t.  I`ll probably just end up being lazy and staying home.  Maybe I`ll watch Labyrinth and Harry Potter...

Holidays in Japan

I meant to write this during  the holidays, just after New Years, to encompass both of the holidays.  I got distracted.  Frankly, everyone should be used to that by now.  It`s ingrained into my nature as much as the sarcasm and tea-drinking.

Please be advised that the following post is mostly going to be about food.  You might want to grab a snack before continuing.

So rather than being a lonely hermit for Christmas (we`ll get to that later), I decided to play tagalong with Ros, helping her to invade our friends Lina and Roland up in Hokkaido.  Classes for me ended on the 22nd, and the 23rd is a national holiday (Emperor`s birthday), so we flew out on the 23rd and met up at the airport in Sapporo.  After lunch at one of the airport restaurants (PIZZA! 100% legit wood fire pizza!) we made our way out to Lina and Roland`s place on the outskirts of Sapporo.  We had some time to veg and catch up (Ros was there for Halloween, but I haven`t seen them since 2013), and then we went to their part-time job location for a Christmas potluck. 

Things you need to know (or remember, if I`ve already told you) about Japanese Christmas before we continue:
1. In Japan, Christmas and New Years importance/traditions are basically the opposite of Western culture.  Christmas is the day you go out and party or just hang with family/friends, and New Years is the important time for family and fancy foods and gifts (monetary).  Businesses are all open and do a good turn on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  Wikipedia says that 84-96% of  the population are Buddhist or Shinto, so being closed on those days would help pretty much no one.

2. Turkey is rare in Japan in general, and turkey for Christmas is relatively unheard of unless you know a Western person, or really like Western films.  Chicken is the name of the game in Japan, particularly of the fried variety.  KFC takes pre-orders for Christmas, and if you`re not wise enough to do this, you might be waiting around for two to three hours for a bucket of original recipe.  Good luck with that.

Lina and Roland work part-time at a farm/stable-type place that runs English camps as well (guys, feel free to correct me if I`m wrong about this), owned and operated by a dude named Steven and his Japanese wife, Aya.  There were about 20 of us in this big, wooden farmhouse dining room around a couple tables pushed together that were pretty much covered with food.  Most of the people in attendance were Japanese, but almost all of them spoke great English, and they were all extremely welcoming and friendly.  It felt really home-y.  Roland and Lina brought (and Ros and I helped carry) some traditional Western food to throw into the mix (Japanese contributions included rice balls, sushi, and chicken wings), including a full turkey.  The Japanese people went nuts.  I`m reasonably sure that most of them had never seen a full cooked turkey in real life before.  They all whipped their phones out and were clamoring around, taking pictures.  It was great, if a bit bizarre from the viewpoint of someone who has turkey dinner upwards of three times per year.  After dinner we played bingo, and I won a candle!  (More importantly: a candle wrapped in bubble wrap.)  Definitely a great way to start off the holidays.

 Adorable Christmas rice ball brought by one of the potluck guests.

On Christmas Eve Lina had to work, so when we finished watching Gremlins, Ros, Roland and I went to do some shopping in downtown Sapporo before meeting up with Lina at the station.  We also had ramen, because Hokkaido is famous for it or something.  I don`t know.  Whatever. 

Photo of Ros's ramen, lovingly stolen from Ros.
 


Once Lina had joined the party, I was subjected to two hours of karaoke (not my favourite thing to participate in, but watching them is entertaining).  Dessert was involved in this karaoke adventure, so my caramel nut parfait (Ros and I are still trying to figure out where exactly the "nut" part came in, because we couldn`t find any) made up for any trauma my off-key singing may have caused to my ego.  We left karaoke as the sun was setting (aka, just after 4PM) and made our way towards the TV tower, where the big light display and German Christmas market was set up.  This was so much fun!  We walked around and enjoyed the lights, window-shopped at all the little booths selling Christmas decorations, and drank hot chocolate (or hot spiced wine, but I`m not really a fan of hot wine, so chocolate for me). 

 We also met Santa, because these things are necessary.  Once we were finished there we headed to Nuts, a popular cafe, for some nachos, fries, and wraps, and to work some feeling back into our fingers. 

As per Lina and Roland`s tradition, we stayed up until midnight on Christmas Eve, and then opened gifts before heading to bed.  In theory, this is so that you can relax and sleep in on Christmas morning and then have all day with your new stuff, but Lina had to work again, so that really didn`t work out for her.  But we did wake up to snow on Christmas!  There was already some on the ground, but it snowed pretty much all day on Christmas Day.  Mid-morning, we headed to the car to pick up Lina, along with another friend, Miki.  It started snowing harder while we were waiting for Lina to get out of work.  Once our raiding party was complete, we moved on to conquer Costco!  Yes, you read that right.  Costco.  Japan has Costco.  It is glorious.  First of all: PIZZA.  Available at the Costco cafeteria thing is honest-to-god, greasy, cheesy, fast food pepperoni pizza.  (Do I have a pizza problem?  Yes.  Deal with it.)  Also available at Costco: basically everything you can get at Costco in North America.  It was fantastic.  And apparently you can have things shipped as well, so I`m debating the merits of getting a membership.  I`m pretty sure the closest location is at least a two hour trip away.  Anyway, not the point.  So we grabbed some lunch, and then shopped for Christmas dinner, as well as some other necessities, and then grabbed a takeout pizza from the cafeteria on our way out.  It was really snowing by the time we got out, to the point where it was sometimes hard to see the road.  But we made it (obviously).  Another of their friends joined us at the apartment for dinner, and we had an evening of Die Hard, Wii games, pizza, BLT pinwheels, chicken wings, and canasta (with me playing over Miki`s shoulder while knitting, because while I don`t enjoy the game, I understand it).  Not even remotely a normal Christmas by my standards, but still a lot of fun.

Roland had work and Lina had a party to go to the next day, so after chatting with my family, Ros put the two of us on a train to Otaru.  It`s a town that re-invented itself as a tourist location, apparently, famous for music boxes and glassware.  It was super weird, because I`ve never been in a place before that was such a juxtaposition.  Standing in Otaru, you feel that you are simultaneously in a traditional Japanese town and a quaint European craft village. 

It`s insane.  The music box shop is absolutely glorious, and I could probably spend at least half a day in there alone (not to mention, a lot of money).  We stopped in a sushi place Ros recommended for lunch, and then continued on to the vast number of glass shops in downtown Otaru. 

Photo lovingly stolen from Ros.

 

We also got samples at the chocolate shop(s) along the way - the same chocolate shop has, like, four locations in a three-block radius, I swear.  In one of the glass shops, I found a product that was screaming my name so loud it`s a wonder I didn`t hear it from outside.  ...Not literally, obviously; that would be weird.  But it was perfect.  It`s a steel bookmark, and dangling from the top is a metal-and-glass charm in the shape of a streetlamp.  I`m reasonably certain the only way you could ever make a product more perfect for me is if there was a hidden Mickey somewhere on it.  When we could no longer feel our fingers (a running theme for our time in Hokkaido), we stopped into a dark, barn-like cafe for a hot chocolate. 

After that, more shopping, and then a warm-up in the cafe above the chocolate shop for tea and cheesecake. 

Some final bits of shopping, a trip to the canal to see it lit up with Christmas lights, and then back on the train to Sapporo to meet with Miki for another Hokkaido specialty, soup curry.  Apparently the place we went to is the best place ever and has already ruined me for having soup curry anywhere else, ever, according to Ros and Miki.  I can believe it, because it was delicious.

Also lovingly stolen from Ros.

We were lazy on the 27th, just kicking around and watching anime and strange Japanese game shows with Lina and Roland until the early afternoon.  It was their anniversary, so they were going to the movies in the evening.  We all headed out for burgers and fries, and then to the Sapporo Factory (mall) so that they could get their movie tickets and we could kill some time at the arcade before Ros and I headed to the airport.  I`m pretty much useless at an arcade, outside of basic-level DDR and the occasional shooting game, but Roland has some scary skills with a claw machine.  On his first try, he managed to hook the ewok that Ros and I had tried for earlier (Ros actually doing things, and me backseat-clawing).  I am now the proud owner of a fluffy, fluffy ewok to cuddle during times when I miss my fluffy, fluffy dog named after an ewok (or the other fluffy, fluffy dog named after a Gremlin, but he doesn`t usually stay still long enough to be cuddled).

I didn`t get back into Osaka airport until after 10PM, at which point it was too late to get trains all the way home, so I had booked myself into a capsule hotel at a spa/bath place in downtown Osaka.  Capsule hotels are...  I think the easiest way to describe them, generally, is a cross between bunk beds and a piece of honeycomb.  For me, it`s really no different than most of the dorm-style hostels I stay in, because I usually just sleep with my backpack at my feet in my bunk anyway.  The capsule areas are divided for men and women, just like the baths, and mine in particular had multiple rooms for the capsules (my room had only four capsules in it).  If you`re familiar enough with me and my physical capabilities, you`ll know that I`m utterly lacking in grace/co-ordination and a total klutz.  In my first experience with Japanese bunk beds, back in 2010, I slipped on the ladder and twisted my ankle.  I haven`t gotten much better since then.  Japanese bunk bed ladders are completely vertical, either part of the frame or flush against the frame rather than angled against the frame, and usually have a gargantuan gap between the last step and the floor.  Capsules are, like, the next level up in difficulty.  There were three steps sticking out, like that tree fungus stuff, with grip bars at the top, and then about a four-inch-wide ledge along the bottom of the capsule opening, with a grip bar over the top as well.  So it`s after midnight when I arrive at the hotel, the lights are off in the main room area because people are sleeping, I`m using my cell phone as a flashlight to figure out which capsule is mine, and then when I figure it out, I have to Lara Croft my way into it.  Somehow I managed to do this more than once without injury.  I had planned to check out the baths in the morning before I left, since it was included in my hotel fee, but I barely got any sleep that night, so I just packed up and headed home as soon as I got up and moving.

I did a grocery run the day after I got home, and then didn`t leave my house again for three days.  To all of my Japanese acquaintances (and likely some of my Western friends as well), this is extremely odd, since it means I spent New Years alone.  There are many traditions involved in Japanese New Year`s celebrations, too many to list, but one of the most popular is the first visit of the year to your local (or preferred) shrine for charm burning, charm aquisition, and a prayer for the coming year.  So not only was I not with other people on this important people-holiday, I didn`t go anywhere.  To the Japanese, that`s basically like saying you spent Christmas alone in your apartment, eating leftovers; odd, and kind of sad.  But I enjoyed the quiet.  I could sleep in, read, and knit to my heart`s content.  I could also drink copious amounts of tea, including the peanut butter cup tea from David`s Tea that I got for Christmas and is really, really nice.  No one expected me to show up to something, to put on socially acceptable clothing, or to even speak.  For a socially awkward introvert like myself, it`s exactly the kind of recharge I needed after enjoying a more social Christmas holiday.  In a nod to some of the Japanese traditional New Years foods, I made a Thai coconut curry soup that included shrimp.  I also had a glass of wine in deference to Western traditions.  Yay.  (I basically stopped caring about New Years as a holiday when staying up until midnight became a regular thing, and not something to be excited about.  For me, it`s often a time to be lazy, and to either lose marginally at Solitaire Frenzy to the majority of my family, or lose spectacularly to my sister and brother-in-law at Settlers of Catan.)

After that, I alternated between relaxing and getting all of my necessary adult errands I`d been putting off taken care of (stupid bills).  I also went out to lunch with the science teacher who speaks English.  We went to the Nepalese curry place up the street and around the corner from where I live, and he showed me pictures from the trip he and his wife took to Bali.  I now want to go to Bali (but not in the cave temple that looks like a very literal Hellmouth).  Nepalese curry place had soup curry.  Ros and Miki were right; I`ve been spoiled for any place other than that restaurant in Sapporo.  I also had a good laugh when he was so excited that they saw squirrels on their trip!  He had pictures and video and everything.  Squirrels are a rarity in Japan, rather than the plague that they are back home.

January is going to be a very busy work month for me, with a number of meetings booked and extra language classes beginning for our students going to Australia at the end of term. 

Silver Week, Plus Thursday

Silver Week was fantastic and I never wanted it to end.  Partly because Ros was here and that was awesome, and partly because I just didn`t want to go back to work.  (What I need is a job where it doesn`t matter when I work, just as long as I`ve put in the necessary hours by the end of the week.)

Saturday morning and afternoon were spent cleaning like a madwoman, and shopping.  And laundry!  For once, it was actually gorgeous, so I was able to hang my laundry out to dry and it actually dried.  Amazing thing, sunshine.  Ros got in just before 11PM, and we commenced with our epic mini-holiday by watching The Emperor`s New Groove and drinking tea.  It`s like we never left university...

Sunday was our lazy day.  Ros accompanied me to the mall and the supermarket so that I could actually learn what some of the things were in my store, buy real sheets, and sign up for a supermarket point card.  Hurray for being a functioning adult, I guess?  Anyway.  The rest of the afternoon and evening were spent in our usual way, with video games, movies, and a massive amount of food.  We made chicken wings (Ros, and I paid attention), nacho dip, and cut veggies, and had a bottle of wine that I loved more than Ros did.  Pomegranate cherry Pinot Noir!  Fabulous stuff.  Like juice, but drier.  We made it through the tutorial and two temples in Zelda, all of The Monuments Men, and half of The Last Unicorn before calling it a night.  During this time, I was also cruising through Facebook (because I have ADD or something and can`t just focus on a movie), and found pictures from a couple of my fellow Mie ALTs who had gone somewhere really pretty.  Ros and I hadn`t really decided what we were going to do yet, so I was like, "Ros, let`s go here."  So we did.

Monday was another beautiful day, perfect for what we had planned.  We left my place in the late morning and took the train all the way out to Akameguchi.  What`s in Akameguchi?  Well, frankly, not much.  But 5km away is something called Akame 48 Waterfalls.  This place is absolutely gorgeous, and fantastic exercise.  There is a bus that runs from the train station to the beginning of the falls trail (and surrounding shop area), but we had just missed one, and would have to wait around an hour for the next one.  So we were like, "Forget that," and decided to walk the 5.2km partway up a mountain to the shop area, and the additional kilometer or so to the beginning of the falls trail.  This area is part of the birthplace of ninja, so ninja-related souvenirs are everywhere.  On our way up, we came across a gate that asked us to make sure it was closed behind us as we ventured along the hiking path so as to not let out the wild boars (um...), Ros bemoaned not bringing her bear bell (there`re a lot of bears in Japan), and we saw the notice asking us not to bother dogs wearing orange bandanas, as these are monkey dogs busy at work.  Yeah.  Monkey dogs.  As in, dogs whose job it is to protect areas and people from pesky and potentially dangerous monkeys.  I can`t make this stuff up! 

Once we actually entered the waterfalls area (there aren`t actually 48; 48 is a Japanese representation of `many`.  Don`t ask.), we were greeted first by tanks displaying giant salamanders.  Japanese giant salamanders, particularly the ones here, are a designated national natural treasure.  Many of the ones in the tanks were older than me, and probably as big as my arm.  And I don`t mean my forearm.  I mean my whole arm.

Beyond the salamander station begins the actual falls trail, which according to the internet is about 4km long, and takes about an hour and a half to walk.  What they don`t tell you (in as many words) is that some of this trail will be flat, some of it will be a dirt hill, some of it will be legitimate stairs, some of it will be tree-root-stairs, some of it will be foot-and-a-half-tall and half-a-foot-wide stone steps, and some of it will just be piles of rocks for you to navigate your way over.  I sort of felt like I was back in Norway, but warmer.  Despite being me, I actually only fell once, and that was on the way back.  The falls were awesome, and I took way more pictures than were probably necessary.

As we reached the last waterfall, we heard the announcement that equates to the ultra-polite version of, "We`re getting ready to close in an hour and a half.  Get the hell off our mountain."  At this point, we`re much, much closer to the other end of the trail (it`s a linear trail, not a circuit), but there aren`t buses to the station at this other end, and we don`t really know that area, so it`s better for us to head back the way we came, from the beginning of the trail and down to Akameguchi.  So we have to go back another not-quite-4km of waterfall trail.  This would be the point when I fell (thankfully not really hurt, but my arm got pretty dirty).  This is also the point wherein we saw the snake (I made Ros walk in front the whole trip for the sake of this eventuality).  We were both quite proud of me, as after her warning I only slowly backed up a few steps instead of screaming and running (narrow, treacherous mountain path may have had something to do with that).  When the snake was a respectable distance off the path and up the side of the mountain, I was able to move past it (while keeping an eye on it the whole time in case it decided to turn around, leap off the mountainside and attack us) and continue our trek down.  By the time we got back to the trail entrance and the souvenir town, we`d missed the last bus back to the station by a lot (we knew we would), so we did the 5.2km back down on foot (but keeping to the road this time, rather than going through the apparently wild boar/monkey infested forest, because the sun was setting and there would be virtually no light in there).  We had a lovely dinner of udon (sitting down has never been so glorious) before hopping the train back home for more movies.

On Tuesday we headed to Ise so that I could actually see the shrine.  This is the holiest and most important Shinto shrine in all of Japan, holding one of the three sacred artifacts belonging to the goddess Amaterasu.  The thing is, every twenty years they rebuild the main shrine housing the sacred mirror (which no one gets to actually see, you just pray at the building it`s in), so it`s a) not old at all, and b) not decorated.  The less important shrines that have stood for a few hundred years are a lot more interesting. 

There was some sort of special dance presentation, though, so we got to see some of that!  It was boring at first, because I could hardly see the stage thanks to the television camera in front of me, but eventually he went away to film something else, and I got a great view of the rest of the performance.

On our way out of the main shrine complex, Ros saw a banner for free tea.  Free tea?!  Heck yes!  So we had a lovely traditional Japanese tea in a very informal setting that we didn't have to pay for.

These are the little sweets that accompanied the tea.  Basically icing sugar paste.  Tasty!

We had an awesome lunch in the temple-town area that was ridiculously filling and tasty.  After that, we hopped a bus to the other side of Ise to see the married rocks.  Yes, you read that right.  Rocks.  Rocks that are married.  I ... can`t really explain it.

Anyway, it`s a really popular spot for couples to visit, for obvious reasons.  Ros and I kind of stuck out a bit, along with the random solo foreigner dude who had been on the bus with us from the shrine.  From there, we tried to make it back to the smaller shrine close to the station, but by the time we caught a bus back into that area, the shrine had closed.  At some point on that bus ride, I got an inexplicable craving for pie.  I said as much to Ros.
Me: I want pie.  Like, I really want pie.  Which is weird.  Other than crumble or meat, I don`t even like pie that much.
Ros: Huh.  Well, we could try to find a cafe?  Maybe?  But I don`t think we`ll really find anything.  I mean, the point of this city is that it`s super-traditional, holy Japan.
Me: Yeah, I know.  I`m not really expecting to find it.  But I still want pie.  Maybe there`s a Starbucks by the station.  They might have pie.
So when we got to the shrine and found it closed, we wandered the small street of shops and restaurants.  We were a bit peckish by this point, even without the pie craving, so Ros pointed out a taiyaki (pastry with filling, usually in the shape of a fish; while other fillings are becoming more popular, the traditional ones are either red bean paste or custard) place.  I said I would have some if they had custard, because red bean paste is nasty as all get-out.  When we looked at their menu, glory hallelujah!  The solution to all of our problems!  They have apple pie taiyaki!  So I was the happiest panda ever, my craving was appeased, and we still had a somewhat traditional Japanese snack.  We headed home after that for a snack-supper, and more movies and video games.

Wednesday morning I said goodbye to Ros at an ungodly hour (it was 7:30 AM) and headed to school.  It was the last day of our holidays, but the Australian exchange students had arrived on Sunday and there was a trip organized for them and their host students (and the teachers) to go to Osaka, and I was invited along.  I`ve never been to Osaka before, so that was an experience.  I didn`t really talk to the students (except through the bus loudspeaker system to translate the important information from my supervisor), but the teachers are really nice.  We pulled into the Namba area, walked to our designated meeting space, and set the kids loose.  The other Japanese teacher who had accompanied us had made reservations for us at a takoyaki restaurant (the female Australian teacher really wanted some too; it wasn`t just me), so the five of us headed there for a great lunch of yakisoba and takoyaki.  After that, Morita-sensei and the other Japanese teacher headed to a cafe to relax.  There wasn`t really anything in the area I was interested in, since I`m not really a shopper, we`d already eaten, and the district is just shops and restaurants, but there was one shrine, so I figured I`d head there and then hit up Starbucks for a frapp and some free wifi so that I could get a new book from the library on my tablet.  We didn`t have enough time for me to head to another district and do something more interesting.  The Australian teachers asked if I minded taking them to Starbucks first, as they needed to connect with home, and needed some help navigating technology.  I ended up staying in Starbucks the whole time, playing tech support and chatting with them.  This was totally cool with me (like I said, I was going to the temple because it was the only thing on the map that wasn`t shopping; also, it was hot and I like AC).  Then it was right back on the bus for the ride home, wherein I finished one book and read two-thirds of another, making me really glad I`d decided to get ebooks that afternoon.

Today (Thursday) was the first day at school for our exchange students and teachers.  The day began with them introducing themselves at our morning teachers` meeting, and again at a school assembly much like my own introduction.  The students are pretty good at Japanese (they`re studying it in school, and the female teacher is their instructor)!  The principal gave a speech to them in English, and seemed to be channeling William Shatner a bit, but that`s totally understandable.  The rest of my day was spent in classes, preparing for classes, and writing this.  Super exciting.  After school the English club hosted a welcome party for the students, which they really seemed to enjoy.  They did a paper balloon relay (imagine that game where you try to keep a balloon in the air, but you're trying to move across the room with your partner, and the balloon is made of paper) and played bingo.  Now I'm relaxing before heading to bed, and there's only one more day before the weekend!