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!

Boo! and Other Autumn Utterances

Apparently I forgot to do this again.  I start thinking about what I want to say about things as they happen, but then I forget to actually type it out in the "really" world.  Kind of like texting people back...

So Halloween and its associated events were fabulous.  My trip to Tokyo was amazing, starting with my usual foray to the Tokyo Disney Resort.  I decided to follow the incredibly popular trend here and do some Disney bounding.  It involved a couple trips to the thrift stores beforehand, but it was well worth it.

For Disneyland, I dressed like Rapunzel, and the Cast Members, especially in Fantasyland, thought I was adorable (and that's why I do it, really - so that complete strangers will tell me how cute I look :D).

I was also by myself this day, which was interesting.  It's the first time I've done a Tokyo park by myself, and the first time in 4 years to do any Disney park alone.  It was super dead, though, so I got to wander around taking pictures of all the Halloween decorations without getting in anyone's way, and ride pretty much everything.  I skipped the really lame rides (Tomorrowland Speedway), the rides that are awkward to do solo (Mad Tea Party), and Splash Mountain (the flowers in my braid were paper, so that would have ended badly).  I got to eat some fun seasonal foods, do some shopping, and just generally laze about the park, soaking up the atmosphere.

At Disney Sea, I had my trusty Ros by my side as we dressed in clothes inspired by The Little Mermaid, and had Ros's first experience with a character who can actually talk (we met Mickey and Minnie in Hong Kong 4 years ago, and that was her first character experience ever)!  Being a grown adult and not having done this in her childhood, she was completely thrown and couldn't entirely wrap her mind around it.  I fielded most of the Ariel conversation and then had a good laugh at Ros's expense afterwards, because I'm an awesome friend like that.  We did some new rides (new for us, not new for the park - and they were the kiddie rides in Mermaid Lagoon that we usually avoid for the obvious reason that we are not accompanied by a child [physically - my mental age doesn't count]), I got to see a show that I've only ever seen in passing before, and we ate at the fancy ship restaurant to celebrate Ros's birthday. 

We also got to see the Villains show on the lagoon, which was all kinds of awesome and full of fabulous costumes that I want in my closet and the phrase "tentacular spectacular" yelled out by Ursula, which had Ros and I cracking up for a good couple minutes.

The real reason I was in Tokyo, though, was because Ros found a concert for us to attend: The Music of Danny Elfman from the Films of Tim Burton.  Awesome!  She'd sent me a picture of the poster and was like, "Wanna go?"  To which I replied, "Um, obviously." 

I love Danny Elfman's music, especially the creepy Tim Burton stuff (Sleepy Hollow being my favourite, as much as I love The Nightmare Before Christmas).  So Ros got the tickets, we kind of vaguely looked at the website to try to figure out what to wear - on one hand, it's the Tokyo Philharmonic, and on the other, they were having a costume contest, so we weren't really sure - but that was it.  Didn't really look to closely.  Then, about a week or two before the event, Ros finds a blurb about it in an English Tokyo magazine that says actual Danny Elfman will actually be on the stage for the concert and actually singing The Nightmare Before Christmas songs like he does in the actual movie.  Needless to say, I flipped.  Mentally, not out loud, because I was at work when she texted me the picture of the blurb and that would have been really awkward to try to explain.  So off we went, amongst people dressed in some pretty freakin' cool costumes, and sat through an absolutely phenomenal concert.  There were so many times I had goosebumps!  The concert ended with the Nightmare set, and there he was, Danny Elfman, singing and rocking out to the music in a way that really reminded me of Elton John, to be honest.  But he was so cool!  He came out for an encore and performed Oogie Boogie's Song (for anyone wondering what it would sound like if Jack Skellington sang that song, the answer is "odd"), with the conductor playing the part of Santa, while wearing the hat.  So, so awesome.

Back at school, we had our Halloween lessons!  The first years were forced into a Halloween tongue twister contest (Hoot owls hoot howls of horror in haunted Halloween houses), and got to do a word search.  Fun, but kind of bland.  Not my best lesson ever.  The conversation class, though.  That was a whole other kettle of fish.  For the first period of class, we played a game I found online called Bump, which they enjoyed even though they're really bad at actually listening to what the other teams say and miss out on what would otherwise be easy points.  The part I'm most proud of, though, was the second period.  I read them a simplified version of Hairy Toe, and the JTE gave a bit of a translation.  The students had to be paying attention, and making notes of the translation that was given for my reading, because then they had to work in groups to retell the story as a comic!  They had a lot of fun with this, and I got some really great comics!

I assigned a different comic-type activity for my first years, where they were practicing compliments by drawing different scenarios I'd given them.  What did I learn?  Some of my kids are cannibals:

And you should never look to this kid for compliments:

Visitors From Abroad

Alrighty!  So the last week of September saw the arrival of our exchange students from Australia and two of their teachers.  They were here for two weeks and it was awesome.  It was a small group, only six students this year (last year they sent eleven, and I think that was too many).  They were an absolute blast.  A couple of the girls (we had four girls and two boys) were fairly reserved in the beginning, but they got over that fast enough.  One of the boys, though, was a character from day one.  He definitely got the most out of this trip, I think.  He was enthusiastic about everything they were doing, and he had a sense of humour that was by turns ridiculous and smart-ass (but never in a mean-spirited way).  The best thing about this kid, though, is that he got my kids to talk.

You know I’ve bemoaned my conversation classes before.  The third years are noisy and like to talk to each other all the time in Japanese but won’t talk much in English, my second year class with Morita-sensei has a couple loud-mouths and about twenty kids who stare blankly at me and wait for Morita-sensei to translate my instructions into Japanese because they can’t be bothered to even try to understand my basic English, and my conversation class with Tanimura-sensei is so quiet you could hear a pin drop.  And that classroom has carpeting.  So when the exchange kids come, we set up their schedules so that they all come to our conversation classes, and then we set them up in groups and have them rotate around to the different groups and each time they rotate they’re given a different conversation topic and a time limit.  Last year this went well, but last year I only had one conversation class, and they were a lot… I don’t want to say better, but… they were better.  So I was worried.  And there were still a couple (mostly one in particular in Tanimura-sensei’s class and I don’t even know why she’s taking the class in the first place, and for the first couple months I would have sworn she was actually mute) that didn’t say much and it was like pulling teeth, but for the most part my kids were excited and eager to talk to the Australian kids.  The teachers came to my third year class as well, and the kids loved that.  Trying to run a legit class with them was a whole other story, because Morita-sensei kept throwing things into the mix (sometimes by interrupting while I was trying to do what my lesson plan said), but even that went off fairly well.  But anyway.  Yeah, the class where they just had to talk to each other was awesome.  

We had the farewell party for them on Friday after school, and there were a lot of tears from the students (even the ones who were still going to see them later because they were hosting the kids and they weren’t actually leaving until the next day).  One of the girls came up to me, thanked me, and basically told me I was so pretty and so awesome and that she basically wants to be me when she’s older.  That was possibly the biggest ego boost I’ve ever gotten in my life.  She was so sweet. 

So yeah, basically the last two weeks have just been a series of awesome experiences.  I got along well with the teachers, too, and we had some good laughs.  I was also invited (read: Morita-sensei said, “Mel, you should come to this!  Please come!”) along with them to check out the kyudo (Japanese archery) club.  Things you need to know:

1. I took a 10-week archery class when I was in Grade 6.

2. While I’m not the most awful person to hold a bow ever, I’m really not good.

     2b. I hit three bullseyes during that 10-week class.  On the target next to the one I was aiming for.            Two of those were in the same night.
3. An unbent Japanese bow is more than two meters tall.  I am decidedly not tall enough to properly draw this bow.

All of these things worked together to ensure I was probably the worst archer to ever step foot inside that club.  If the objective was to hit the lawn, I performed admirably.  The objective was not to hit the lawn.

After they left, I got to meet up with a friend of mine who’s visiting Japan with a couple of her friends.  This was especially exciting for me because it was our first time meeting in person (I started editing her Kingdom Hearts fan fiction nine years ago, back in university, because we’re nerds).  There was squealing and hugging and excited fast-talking, and then we headed out to explore Osaka! 

I’ve been to Osaka before (my first time there was with last year’s exchange kids, when I was asked to accompany their field trip), but I haven’t really seen a whole lot.  Mostly I go there because there’s a wax salon run by a lady who was trained in England, so I don’t have to worry about things being miscommunicated.  And I went to USJ for my birthday, you may recall.  But I’ve never really done Osaka before, so this was a new experience for me, too!  We started out by heading over to Expo City (leftover from the 1970 Osaka Expo) to hit up the Pokemon Expo Gym.  I figured it would just be me wandering while they looked at all of the things since I'm not super into Pokemon, but I actually picked up this really cute tin that had coffee cookies in it (that will later house my loose teabags, because I always seem to have some of those lying around).  We checked out the mall at Expo City, and then headed back into the city center to check out Osaka Castle.  I’ve been through that park before (it’s a nice walk, and there’s a Domino’s Pizza nearby), but didn’t go inside the castle.  We decided to bypass the ridiculous line for the elevator and hike up to the 8^th floor lookout via the stairs.  That…was a lot of stairs, but it was worth it.  It was gorgeous afternoon weather, and the lookout area is actually outdoors, so that was fantastic.  There was a craft beer festival with some food tents in the park right by the station, so we stopped there for some grub and the guys got some craft beer.  I'm not actually sure what Katy and I ate.  It was meat from an undetermined part of a cow in some kind of tomato sauce and served over a white puree that we have absolutely zero idea what it was.  I'm going with beans.  Pureed kidney beans.  The last part of our day involved going up in the HEP Five ferris wheel near Osaka station for another great view of the city (but pictures taken from inside don't turn out well).  I headed back to their hotel to pick up the bags of Reese's Katy was kind enough to bring over for me (I'm aware that I have a peanut butter problem; I like to think it gives me character), before catching the train back home.

Now I'm back to work for the last week before midterms.  But because it's the last week of classes before midterms, all of my first year classes have been cancelled so that the teachers can make sure everyone's learned all of the necessary grammar.  And my conversation classes have their in-class midterm.  So I'm sitting here, typing this.  But I took off the actual exam week to go back to Disneyland like the uber-nerd I am, and also to hear the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra with Ros.  So excited!!!!

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!

What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Partie Un)

Summer vacation started at my school officially on July 20th, but I started my vacation a bit early.  The week before that, I accomplished something I've wanted to do since my first trip here six years ago: I climbed Mt. Fuji.

It was a gruelling climb, and there were many moments where I honestly didn't think I would make it, but I did, and I'm super proud of myself.  Especially given the ridiculous handicap I had, which I'll explain in a minute.

When I decided that I was going to do this, I did some searching around, reading accounts of people who did it on their own.  It seemed really complicated, with the various paths you can take up the mountain, and in many places (especially the mountain huts) it seemed like fluency in Japanese would be required, so instead I did a slightly different search and found the tour package offered by Willer.  Definitely a good idea.  The package included transportation both ways between Tokyo and Fuji, a mountain guide (which actually turned into two mountain guides), an English-speaking guide (who was also a mountain guide, and our other mountain guides spoke English too, but this one was with us from pick-up to drop-off, not just on the mountain), meals, and a stay in a mountain hut so that our hike was properly timed for sunrise.  There were also add-on options to the package for equipment rental (which I did not purchase, and I regretted not purchasing it virtually the whole time) or a post-climb bath (which I also did not purchase, but that actually turned out to be a good thing, more on that later).

So the bus picks up in Tokyo (Shinjuku) at 7:30 in the morning.  I have two choices: a) get there the day before and pay for that transportation as well as a hostel for the night, or b) take the night bus, rolling the transportation and overnight shelter requirements into one cheap little package.  I went with option b.  Thing is, as I've detailed in my past adventures, I don't really sleep on the night bus.  Probably even less than I sleep on planes, which isn't really much.  So when we pulled into Shinjuku at 5:40AM that day, I was running on about one to one and a half hours of incredibly disjointed and not even remotely restful sleep.  Boom, handicap!  I have to climb a mountain on this.  I regret that decision as well. 

Anyway, the bus picks us up (there are 27 of us, not including the guide), and we take our ride from downtown Tokyo to the 5th station (of 10 total, with 10 being the summit) of the Subaru trail.  The people who bought the equipment rental package get their equipment, and we all have a ridiculously early lunch (like, before 11). 

We eat, get our stuff together, meet our other two guides, and just after noon we begin our trek up the mountain!  In this time, I've made friends with a lovely couple from Finland, a father-son pair from New York, a pair of undetermined relationship from Ottawa, and a girl from the Netherlands travelling solo.  We were a gay couple and a pair of irritating best friends away from casting a season of The Amazing Race, I swear.  Sarah (the Dutch girl) and I became climbing buddies, since we could chat while we climbed, and we seemed to have the same cautious excitement about this (you're really excited until you actually get there and look at it and you realize you can't even see the top of the mountain and then you kind of regret all of your life choices).

The climb up the Subaru trail basically looks like this: you start at the fifth station (where all the restaurants and shops are, because buses can actually go that far so many people take trips to Fuji and just spend the day there before going home), then comes the sixth station (the station the mountain safety team works out of), the seventh station (parts one through, I think, four), the real eighth station (with multiple parts as well), the old eighth station (which is where our mountain hut was), the ninth station, and then the summit.  Our guide took us at a slow pace, with breaks roughly every half hour to water ourselves and take deep breaths to adjust to the altitude.  Our goal was to do about six hours of climbing to reach the mountain hut, at which point we would have dinner and rest, and then get up and moving by 2AM the next day to make the one and a half/two hour-ish climb to the summit for sunrise.  The first few hours weren't bad.  Definitely hard work, and not something I should have been doing on as little sleep as I had, but I was doing fine.  I was definitely worse off when I did the half marathon at Disney two years ago.  Mostly the path was an incline of semi-packed dirt, with a few retaining steps around corners as you slolam your way up the mountain.  The steps were particularly difficult for me, being as short as I am.  Many of them came up to around my knee, so I have to keep lifting my knee to my chest and put a lot of energy into hoisting myself up these things.  And the guide gives us advice like, "Push your weight through your heel to keep the strain off your thighs," or, "Take baby steps to use less energy!"  And I take another look at these stairs and think, "Baby WHAT?!"  But yeah.  That was the first couple hours.  That was the easy part.

My feet at the sixth station.

After about two or so hours of that, our guide announces that we're coming up on a section of what he calls "steep rock," and we're going to be climbing that for about two hours.  He advises those who have been using those walking pole things to put them away, as we may need the use of our hands a bit.  Alright, that sounds... vaguely ominous, but sure.  Let's go!  So "steep rock" turns out to actually mean "irregularly shaped volcanic slag," and it's only JUST climb-able, with odd footholds, and again with the huge steps I have to take that practically shove my kneecap into my neck.  It's a tough climb.  After a gruelling amount of effort, extra personal breaks for a few seconds at a time, and draining at least one of my bottles of water, we reach the seventh station.  Hurray.  Only about another hour and a half of this rock nonsense, and then about another hour of dirt hill climbing after that to reach our destination.  Because we're only halfway through the day's climb at this point.  We take an extra-long break at the beginning of the seventh station before continuing our way up.

Rock.  So much steep rock.

This is where we start to lose people, and we learn the purpose of having multiple mountain guides.  It's so the rest of us can keep going while one guide takes the ones who can't make it back.  Thankfully, they don't have to go all the way back; there's space available along the seventh station mountain huts, so they can stay the night, potentially still see something of the sunrise, and then meet us back at the fifth station after the descent in the morning.  Every time we reach a new set of buildings after a tough bit of climbing I think, "Oh man, we must be almost there!  It's been forever!"  No.  It's just another section of the seventh station, we're still a ways away from our stop, and my body is starting to hate me.  I've lost my Dutch friend, so barring a couple conversations with the dad from New York (we lost his son as well) at the rest stops I've got no one to actually talk to on this climb anymore which means I have no distraction.  All I have is this climb.  Other people are starting to feel the altitude a bit, and I'm not sure if it's the altitude or just my lack of sleep finally catching up to me (my money is mostly on the latter), but my balance is starting to feel really off.  Not bad enough that I can't climb, but I definitely need to climb slower than everyone else.  So I'm at the back of the pack with the last guide.  It's embarassing, I feel incredibly out of shape, and so many times over these two hours I consider throwing in the towel and going back to the seventh station.  But there's something inside me that's determined to do this.  It's hard, and my limbs are protesting every step I take and every time I rise from a break I want to sit right back down, but something in me refuses to quit until I actually can't climb anymore (or I fall off the mountain).  So I kept going.

 

Everything you see is one station, but it'll take you forever to get through all of it.

It started raining about five minutes before we reached our mountain hut.  We'd been lucky enough to have gorgeous weather thus far in our climb, but up near the top of the mountain the weather can get unpredictable.  So we were pelted pretty hard, and it started coming down even worse when we got inside.  Even though it's close to our target arrival time (we actually made it fifteen minutes early), our supper won't be ready for a while, so we have some time to strip off our wet outer layers (and socks), and just relax and maybe nap a bit.  We're in a room to ourselves, and by "ourselves" I mean all 22 of us who made it this far, laid along the main floor and each of the bunk wings of the room six-across like a high school sleepover party gone weird.  Eventually we were called down to dinner (curried burger patty and rice), and then went back up to crash, with our instructions to be awake by 1:30 so that we could start our climb at 2:00.  A bunch of us set alarms, and we all settled into our futons.  The summit climb in the morning was completely optional (obviously), and I wasn't sure how sore I would be in the morning, so I was resigned to the fact that this may be as far as I made it.  Especially since, when the alarms started going off at dark o'clock in the morning, I hadn't really slept.  Again.

I was surprisingly good for the climb in the morning.  I mean, I was incredibly tired, obviously, but just sleep-tired.  My body didn't hurt at all.  I was equal parts shocked and thankful.  So I dressed in all my layers, removed anything extraneous from my bag to leave at the hut (we were coming back for breakfast after the summit), and headed out with my flashlight to join the herd.  It wasn't too busy heading up to the top (apparently there can be "traffic jams" sometimes that cause the climb to take more than two hours), and it wasn't any worse than anything we'd faced thus far coming up.  It was just a little scarier because of the dark (I had a handheld flashlight instead of the headlamp because I didn't rent the equipment; headlamp would have been loads easier, but I didn't trip and fall and die, so I'm considering it a win anyway), but physical exertion wise it was fun.  But let me tell you, the dark makes it a lot more boring, without anything to look at.  Add that to not really having anyone to talk to in order to distract me, and I was afraid this climb would actually drive me insane.  So I did what I usually do in these kinds of situations and retreated into my mind, only coming out to interact with people on breaks.  I can reliably inform you that, excluding the time we took for breaks, it takes almost exactly the length of Disney's Beauty and the Beast to reach the summit from the old eighth station.

The summit was all kinds of cold and wet.  Clouds had moved in, the wind was whipping every which way, and we couldn't really see anything.  Our guides had to make the call to cancel the walk around the volcanic crater, and our sunrise consisted entirely of the dark just becoming less dark.  Disappointing, but I made it to the top. 

The descent is where the intense regret at not renting the climbing equipment comes in.  There's a separate path for descent (presumably to help the flow of traffic and to reduce accidents), and it's entirely semi-packed/semi-loose dirt and rocks on a steep slant, slaloming down the mountainside. 

They recommend having the climbing sticks to take the stress off your knees.  Personally, I think they should make them mandatory.  I read that, and I was like, "Nah, it won't be that bad.  I can do without!"  And I mean, I did.  Obviously. I didn't have a choice.  Going down the mountain was kind of an imperative.  But it hurt.  A lot.  Basically you're walking down a steep, shifting hill for three hours.  But after a lot of effort, I made it all the way back to the fifth station to grab some omiyage for my coworkers.

I hadn't really planned on buying anything for myself, but I was feeling pretty nasty after a couple days without a shower or being able to brush my teeth, and wearing the same clothes that were pretty saturated in sweat by this point.  Like I said, I hadn't purchased the onsen option when I booked the package, but I was pretty sure I'd just be able to pay separately when we got there, since we were all stopping there anyway.  Apparently I'd had enough foresight to pack extra underthings, socks, and yoga pants, but not enough foresight to pack a clean shirt.  So I had to buy one.  I found one of the largest shirts I could find in green so that it would be super comfy and also long enough to wear with yoga pants and still be publically acceptable since I would be going into Tokyo after this.  Win.  We all got back fairly early, so the guide was able to have the bus brought around an hour early, which would give us more time at the baths.  When we got there, it turned out it was Ladies' Day, so my ticket actually cost ￥100 less than it would if I'd bought the package.  More win.  After a lovely soak, brushing my teeth twice, and bundling all my dirty things into plastic bags in my backpack, I got back on the bus and we made our way back to Tokyo!

(And a big thanks to Ros who did my mountain laundry while I passed out after I got back.  Tired Mel was tired.)

In Which Mel Pretends to Know Things About Athletics

Remember the culture festival back in September?  Well in June, we have the Sports Festival! 

Those of you who know me know that, despite my desire to run (which mostly stems from my desire to use marathons as an excuse to visit Disney), I'm about as athletic as a sloth.  It just doesn't happen.  Never has.  Thankfully, it wasn't as incredibly awful as I was expecting, mostly because non-homeroom teachers have a very minimal role other than observing.  The student council asked me to be a judge for the performances in the afternoon, but we'll get to that later.

Sports Festival is basically a competition between homerooms (and, later in the day, clubs) to see who is the best at... I suppose general athletics?  But mostly track-type things?  Each homeroom designs a t-shirt that they all wear for the day, though, so that's pretty cool.  Some of them are really cute. 

The day starts out with a variety of events that had me flashing back to those godawful mandatory track and field days in elementary school, where everyone was forced to participate in two or three events, and I failed at everything because of aforementioned lack of athletic prowess.  There were stations for long jump and high jump, as well as tracks for sprint races.  The students' achievements in each component were recorded, which then translated to a score for the event for their homeroom.  I don't really understand how it all works.  Also in the middle of the track was a tug-o-war station, which was really entertaining to watch for a while. 

Before lunch was the "obstacle course," which is definitely not what you're thinking about, unless you watch anime about school life.  This was the point where basically all of my anime dreams came true.  It was amazing!  So.  What this is.  It's a relay race, with each person/group at each section of the relay tackling a different task.  It starts out with one runner, who spins themselves as quickly as they can 20 times when the pistol goes off, and then sprints forward to grab bread hanging on a line with just their teeth.  Once they've got that, they run to the pair waiting ahead and tag them in.  That pair runs to a bucket that contains the names of a bunch of the teachers.  Those teachers are waiting ahead, all dressed in ridiculous costumes for extra fun.  The pair must reach into the bucket, grab a name, locate their ridiculously dressed teacher in the crowd of ridiculously dressed teachers, and run with them to the next point.  They tag in the three-legged racers.  That part is pretty straightforward.  When that pair reaches the end of their section, they tag in a potato sack jumper, who jumps to a certain point and then is allowed to abandon the sack and sprint the rest of the way to the final section.  They tag in a team of five of their classmates (or sometimes four classmates and their homeroom teacher, which was just hilarious) who are strapped to those group ski things?  You know what I mean?

These things. 
Yeah, so they're the final section of the race.  It's all very exciting and very funny, and so much like what I've seen in anime that it pretty much made my day right there.

 After lunch (which was a bento provided through my social committee fees, so that was nice) was the time for performances.  Each homeroom created and rehearsed a two minute dance routine (which I still don't know when they had the time to do) to perform, and I was part of a panel of ten judges who would hold up a number from 1-5 after each routine.  It was really awesome, and of course the sports course homerooms for each year were the best because they had, like, acrobatics and gymnastics in their dances, but some of the other classes were good too!  I was out in the sun for about an hour straight doing that, and got totally sunburned, but it was worth it.

The day ended with relay competitions between homerooms, and then any clubs who wanted to compete together (the brass band has some surprisingly fast kids).

Everything since then has been pretty boring.  I did go camping ("camping" really, since it was a fully furnished cabin) with a large group of other JETs partway through the month, and got to swim at a fabulous spot in a startlingly cold river way down south.  That was pretty cool.  But yeah.  It's exam time at the end of first term, and then summer vacation starts.  I've got some super exciting things planned, including my parents' first ever visit to Japan!

Post-Birthday Post

So it's been more than a month, and that's super awkward.  Let's just pretend I did this sooner, m'kay?

Last time I posted we were talking about my birthday.  I took myself to Universal Studios Japan (USJ).  I went alone, which was simultaneously really awesome and really weird.  I mean, I've done theme parks on my own before (obviously, since I used to spend all my days off in the parks back when I worked at EPCOT), but I've never done a theme park for the first time by myself.  I usually like to have someone with me to exclaim over all the cool stuff I see.  But, as you'll see, it was kind of useful to be alone at some points.  Anyway.  I'll start back at the beginning.

I headed to Osaka on the Friday night, because I had zero desire to get up and ride a train before dawn on Saturday.  I get excited about theme parks, yes, but not  that excited.  I'm still mostly not a morning person.  Not the point.  So I checked in the night before at the J-Hoppers hostel one stop away from USJ, which was really nice, and had a decent night's rest.  The park hours were from 9-9, with ticket sales beginning at 8AM (you can't buy tickets in advance unless you're getting them through certain travel agencies outside the country), so my goal was to be in line by 7:30.  I met that goal easily, actually arriving somewhere around 7:15, and had about 20 people in front of me in the queue I chose.  Ticket sales began promptly at 8, I got my day pass, and then moved into the massive throngs of people waiting to get into the park (there were a huge number of Chinese tourists with advance tickets plus the forty bazillion people actually from Osaka who have annual passes).  That's when things got weird.  At about 8:20, they start letting people through the gate.  But not, like, only certain people who get perks with something they bought (they had a separate line for that); I mean everyone.  So I figured, okay, it's like Wonderland in Toronto.  They start filing people through the turnstiles around 8:30, but then there are ropes stopping them from actually reaching areas of interest that don't get dropped until park opening.  Alright.  I head off to the right, determined to get as close to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as I can, because I know that's going to be stupidly busy.  And I just keep going, and going...  I get into the area, and I still haven't been stopped.  I walk through Hogsmeade, and I'm still not stopped (none of the shops or food carts are open yet, though).  I get to Hogwarts, and they're welcoming people into the ride queue.  O...kay.... 

There were a few moments walking through the castle where we stopped briefly, but I don't think I actually ever stood still for more than two or three minutes at a time.  Once my locker was obtained (because they don't let you bring anything on the ride) and I made it through to the actual loading area, I was ushered onto the ride by myself, with three perfectly good seats empty beside me, and off I go.  I get off the ride at 8:58.  Awesomesauce. 

I proceeded to ride the other ride in the Harry Potter area, Flight of the Hippogriff (or something like that.  Whatever.  It has a nesting hippogriff, and it's adorable).  I browsed the shops a bit, but didn't really feel like carrying anything so early in the day, plus I was sure that my planned chocolate frogs would melt, so I figured I'd come back later.  When I exited that area, I found out that park attendance was high enough that I would need a timed entry ticket to get back into the area.  This was necessary for me, as I'd also planned to have a meal at The Three Broomsticks when I did my shopping, so I had to head to the area distributing those tickets and got one of the few left available (already!).  I could re-enter the area just before 1PM.  Cool.

On the "list of things I wanted to do" was the Hollywood Dream: The Ride coaster, and it was the closest thing to Harry Potter, so it made sense to stop there next.  There are two separate queues for this ride (not including the single rider one) because they've added a new experience; Hollywood Dream: Backdrop.  Using the same track, they reversed a couple of the coaster trains so that you do the whole ride backwards.  This was intriguing to me, and I usually like backwards coasters, but the line strictly for that experience was more than two hours, and the estimated wait for single riders was less than an hour.  In the single rider line, you have to be willing to ride either direction, because they're just going to shove you wherever they can.  Except the dude who was doing the loading queues really sucked at his job because he wasn't filling the rows like he should have been, so there were a lot of empty seats that should have gone to single riders and that was contributing to the long wait time.  But I got on a Backdrop train, so that was cool!  ...At first.  Okay, so it's not like it was a bad ride, but it wasn't stellar.  Because they literally just painted the train car a different color and threw it on the tracks backwards, the ride is, for lack of a better term, awkward.  You'd think a coaster is just a coaster, but there are definite differences between this and a coaster that's actually been designed  for backwards movement.  It just doesn't feel right to ride this one backwards.  But like I said, not a bad ride, and I still managed to get exactly what I had wanted at the time, so that was all good.

Moving on to Spider-Man.  I love this ride.  I loved it at Islands of Adventure, and I love it in Japan where I can only understand 15% of what they're saying but I don't even care because it's just that awesome.  Single rider was only 20 minutes, so that was great, too!  When I got off the ride, I saw a line of people across the street, and I was like, "Hm, might as well check what that's about," so I did and there was a photo spot where you could get a photo with a hanging-upside-down Spider-Man statue.  Obviously I did this, because how can you not?! 

Then when I was finished, I started strolling towards Jurassic Park.  Before I could actually exit New York, though, I stopped by tape on the ground with "Violin Trio" written on it, and a couple people gathered around.  Violin Trio is exactly what it sounds like.  It's a street show they have with three violinists.  It was something I really wanted to see, but at the same time wouldn't have been devastated if I'd missed it.  I joined the small gathering, figuring, "Hey, the show probably starts within the next ten minutes, I'm making good time, and it's not like I have to worry about what anyone else wants; might as well stop!"  Yeah, more like "show starts in 30 seconds."  More awesome luck! 

The show was great, but after listening to a few pieces it was getting pretty hot, and I was ready to get wet!  I left New York, and headed over to the other side of the park. 

In Florida (at least when I was there), Jurassic Park consisted mostly of food and the one Jurassic Park water ride.  Here they have a new suspended roller coaster added that looks amazing.  The problem being that everyone thinks it looks amazing, so the single rider line was close to three hours, and the regular standby was even longer.  Uh, no.  Not happening.  I don't have that kind of attention span, even with my phone, iPad, and DS on me.  So I continued on and basically walked onto the water ride (I maybe waited 5 minutes?).  Oh man.  I forgot, because it's been 6 years and I only rode it that one time in Florida, but you get SOAKED on that ride.  And I was wearing jeans.  It was so incredibly uncomfortable, and yet 100% worth it at the same time.  And yeah, I closed my eyes as soon as we entered the warehouse in the carnivore area of the ride.  Dinosaurs are still scary.

After that I mostly just wandered around, in and out of shops and areas I wasn't particularly interested in.  Like, I've never seen Jaws, and I'm ambivalent about sharks, so I wasn't really raring to wait in a line for that, but walking through that area was nice.  I'm also not a fan of Back to the Future (sorry, Dad) so I wasn't going to ride that (even though it's closing up for good and I think it's the last one out there?), but I did take a picture with the DeLorean because it's iconic and how can you not? 

Lunch time!  That's right.  I did all this already and we're only halfway through the day!  Amazing, right?!  I headed back to Hogsmeade for my first time into The Three Broomsticks, where I had a lovely lunch of fish and chips, along with a necessary cup of butterbeer.  Because butterbeer.

 I also bought myself a birthday cupcake with a mini chocolate frog on it from Honeydukes!  The lady at the shop counter warned me to eat it fast so that it wouldn't hop away!  (In Japanese.  That's right, I'm just that awesome.  Or it was really obvious what she was saying from her gestures.  Take your pick.)

I think the rest of the day was just repeats of what I did in the morning???  I rode Spider-Man at least twice more, back to Jurassic Park (to walk on again) when I got too hot later in the afternoon, and satisfied my shopping needs (aka I got a Slytherin phone case and tie).  This was the point where it sucked to be alone, because I didn't have anyone to chatter to while I wandered, and I didn't have anything that I was really focused on as a goal to occupy my mind.  I treated myself to funnel cake after dinner, because I love funnel cake and I can't remember the last time I had one, and then picked an awesome spot for the night parade!  ...Which was really, really not an awesome parade and I regret that I didn't just go stand in line for the dinosaur coaster instead.  I thought it would be full of Snoopy and Harry Potter and other such things that they have at the park.  There was one Snoopy float that was literally just a giant Snoopy, one Hello Kitty, and an Elmo. 

The rest of the parade was all fairy tale stuff that just screamed "Look how we got around Disney copyrights!!!"  I think that was really my only disappointment for the day, though.  The rest of it was fabulous, and I look forward to going back again sometime!