rynelm

OK, so it's been four months since I updated this. Perhaps it's time I posted something again...

So, first of all... I'm returning to the UK this summer! I've had a great time here in Japan, but it seems about time to move on to new things. I'll be sad to leave, but I can't stay forever. It's time to go.

What of the past four months? Well, at the end of December I went to Taiwan for a few days. I really liked it there, actually. The people seemed very open and friendly (although my complete inability to speak any kind of Chinese didn't help!) There weren't many traditional tourist attractions there (although the night markets were pretty cool – complete with snake tamers and reflexology shops, and there's a massive museum and the world's tallest building, Taipei 101), but it actually seems like it would be a nice place to spend a longer amount of time and get to know better. I ended up hanging around with some dentists for a couple of days, one of which studied at the same university as someone staying at the youth hostel, and they showed me around a little. There was also a massive earthquake in the south just after I arrived (fortunately I was in Taipei, in the north, where it wasn't so strong.) Internet pretty much went down for the entire island for a day or so, and planes couldn't take off and stuff, due to underground cables being severed. Fortunately by the time I was scheduled to leave everything was sorted out, but still... seems I can't escape drama on my travels!

I also passed my Japanese test! Yay! I got 89%, so obviously I'm pretty pleased. :-)

The next term of school passed pretty much as usual... not bad, just nothing particularly remarkable springs to mind (except some drama over the re-contracting thing, but I probably shouldn't post about it to a public journal...)

I didn't do much in the spring holiday in March / early April. I would have liked to go back to Yakushima again, but I wasn't yet sure what I was going to do after my contract ended, so I wanted to save the money just in case. Fortunately I do know what I'm doing now though – but more on that in a minute. I did go to Mt. Aso (the volcano) and Kurokawa onsen (famous onsen near the volcano) though. The Kurokawa village is really nice. It obviously makes most of it's money from tourism, but they've developed the village very tastefully in a traditional Japanese style, with small little stores and restaurants and things selling interesting stuff, with the onsen dotted around the village. I also stayed in a capsule hotel for the first time (not at Kurokawa)! Whoo! (It seemed to me a little bit like an upscale version of a bunk at a youth hostel...)

So what am I doing next year? Hehehe...

I'm doing a second master's course in Human Language Technology at Sheffield University. I'm actually really excited about taking the course. The syllabus contains all sorts of things that I'm really interested in, and it would link in well to my time in Japan. Plus apparently it would be a good starting point if I wanted to pursue a PhD in the area of natural language processing. And they're going to pay me to take it! Who would have thought?

Since that means I have some savings available now, I'm going to spend them doing some traveling before the course starts at the beginning of October. First I'll probably go back to Yakushima for a little while, then stop back in Hitoyoshi for one last goodbye... then... (drum roll...)

Ride the Siberian railway from Beijing to Moscow, via Mongolia, stopping off at various points of interest along the way. This includes cool things like staying with nomads in the Gobi desert, and a homestay near Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world (and a World Heritage Site.) Needless to say I'm rather excited! Maybe I should study a little Russian... :-S

My schedule should bring me back to the UK in early September. If anyone is reading this I am hoping to get the chance to meet up with people again!

Anyway, that's all for now, take care,

Tom (a.k.a. Smug Git)

So this Sunday was the Japanese Language Proficiency test. I don't think it went as well as I'd hoped, some parts were pretty difficult (especially the listening questions), but I don't think I did badly enough to fail. It ended up taking most of the weekend, since I had to travel up to Fukuoka, stay the night, wait around on the Sunday between the sections of the exam, then travel back again in the evening. There was a Chinese girl who got thrown out for cheating by opening the exam paper before they gave the signal too... what a way to try and cheat! Anyway, I'll be finding out my score some time in February.

Other than that, not much is new. I haven't done any travelling in the past month, just chilling. Oh, there was some kind of conference thing for all the Kumamoto JETs up in the city though. It looks like I'll be appearing on the TV again, this time in some kind of thing about JET.

Maybe I'll do something interesting in the winter holiday.

OK, so I failed to make any posts for nearly three months... I'm still alive down here though! Sorry for not keeping in touch with everyone more.

So, I guess I'm not going to write up the rest of the Korea trip. It was good stuff though. After the Korea trip I went on a random trip to Nagano too, which was perhaps one of the best trips I've made while in Japan. It was almost completely unplanned, but through a series of coincidences and just asking people there for recommendations I ended up seeing some really amazing places and meeting some interesting people (like an expert on Chinese characters with some interesting stories, and a group of Matsumoto JETs!) The highlight was the last day of the trip, when I walked a preserved section of the Nakasendo (an old road between Nagoya and Tokyo) and stayed at a traditional inn. It turned out, as luck would have it, the night I was there was the annual village festival, and the family who owned the inn took me with them to see the festival, at night, on top of a mountain, with fireworks and bonfires and free drinks!

Since then I've been back teaching in school, and to be honest, although it's been fun as always, not a lot really stands out to write home about. There were some sports festivals, English competitions, weekends spent with friends etc. I don't know, nothing sticks out to write home about, but that's in no way to say it hasn't been good. Some new JETs came in to the area in the summer (and others who finished their contracts left), so it's been kind of fun showing them around a bit and just having some new faces here.

It's now less than a month to go to the Japanese exam I entered for. I'm kind of worried, the past exams are pretty tough. Hopefully it'll go OK, but if it catches me on a "bad Japanese" day I could be in trouble... I've started reading books in Japanese, which seems to be doing wonders for my vocabulary. My current book is "Tokyo Tower" by Lilly Frankie (a pen name, the author is actually Japanese.) It's a really good read, and currently a best seller in Japan, with several awards, and being made into a movie. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be available in translation (yet?), but if it makes it to the silver screen it could be worth a look. Anyway however, when I say "read", it's currently taking me about an hour to read six pages, with a dictionary to check the meanings of things. I think I'm slowly getting better, but still...

I think I've pretty much decided that I won't be recontracting again this year. It feels like I've kind of put my career on hold while I've been here, and it's feeling like it's been a long time already. I need to get back into something related to IT. What shape my next step will take though is yet to be determined, but I'm feeling the need to change.

That's not at all to say that I'm eager to leave here. In fact, quite the opposite, I can see it being quite difficult. It's really starting to feel like home here, and I'm getting to know more people and form more friendships. I feel like I've changed during my time here too, although it's difficult to say in what way exactly (hopefully for the better, but I suspect I may have become a little more lazy...) It's just, at some point you have to let go and move on to the next thing, whatever that may be.

Maybe this sounds a little premature, afterall, I'm still going to be here for a while yet. But that last few months really have passed in a flash, and before I know it it'll be time to go...

OK, end of random ramble.

And sorry again for not keeping in touch with all of you back home more! Really! I do think of you all quite often, even if I don't write as much as I should.

(photos)

OK, so I'm back from Korea! I had Thursday (10th) to Monday (14th) off work, plane tickets to and from Korea booked over Internet, a reservation at a guesthouse (again, booked over Internet), and also a reservation for a one day tour of Panmunjom and the DMZ (but more about that later...) So, early Thursday morning I drove to Fukuoka airport, boarded the plane and was on my way to the capital Seoul. They put me next to the emergency exit (because I was clearly the best choice for guarding everyone's lives...) with another British guy apparently changing at Korea to go on to London. Apparently he had spent a few days in Korea before, so we talked for a bit about that and other things... hopefully he got back to London easily enough - I don't think the terror arrests had hit the news yet at that point. Certainly I didn't notice anything unusual during the flight and airport procedures.

The guy I sat next to on the plane warned me to be more on my guard in Korea than I might be in Japan... apparently his first experience in Korea had been being ripped off by a taxi driver from the airport. And, true enough, after coming out of the departure area a guy walked up to me:

Him: Can I help you, where are you going?
Me: Umm... (Fumbles around looking for the printout I had with directions to the guesthouse, which, incidentally, recommended taking the bus)
Me: SunKunKyuu university?
Him: Oh, yes, I know. I'm taxi. Let's go.
Me: This says I can take the bus.
Him: No, no, there is no bus.
Me: Well, I'll ask anyway... (starts walking to the bus information desk)
Him: Taxi, no thank you?
Me: No thank you. (But not said in a nasty way...)

So I go to the bus information centre (that's written in English).

Me: SunKunKyuu university? (points to where it's written on the printout)
Him: (Looks at printout) OK. 8000 (points to till display) Outside. (points to bus stop outside)
Me: Gamsahamnida (according to my guide book, thank-you in Korean)
Him: !"£$%^&*() (I have no idea what he said)

Small bow, smile, take ticket and go to bus stop. So yes, there was a bus.

So the bus has some sort of computer announcement thing as we go past the stops, and eventually it got to SunKunKyuu university. After getting off the bus a young lady who got off at the same stop asked me (in very good English) where I was going and if she could help. It turned out she was working at the university, and originally from Singapore. So she looked at the directions I'd printed out and accompanied me to the guest house from the bus stop. :-)

So I arrived at the guest house. Fortunately the lady in charge spoke reasonable English, so there was no problem there. The website had boasted a bar attached to the guesthouse, which turned out to be "you can buy some beer from us and sit on the sofa if you like", but given that it was only 12000 won (about 6 pounds) per night to stay there I wasn't going to complain. Unfortunately whenever I was around the people downstairs were always chatting in Korean though, and I didn't want to interrupt whatever they were talking about by imposing myself and my English on them, so I mostly left them to it, but they were very friendly. (Hopefully they didn't misinterpret that as my snubbing their friendship...) Probably the worst points of the guest house were the lack of air conditioning (it got pretty hot at night) and the a couple of other gusts who seemed to enjoy coming back at 3 in the morning having gone out drinking, turning on the light in the room where everyone was sleeping and talking and moving about loudly. But still, I guess that's what you get for choosing to sleep somewhere cheap...!

Now before setting off, I'd searched Internet for vegetarian restaurants in Seoul, and apparently there were several to be found in a place called Anguk, so I headed over there on the underground in search of dinner. (Without making any major mistakes on the underground either... bonus!) So after arriving at Anguk, and going to look at the palace there, finding it closed, and running into another Brit who was teaching English in Korea, I went to "Dimibap", a vegetarian restaurant that seemed to have got many good reviews on the Internet site I found.

The food was pretty good, as was the atmosphere, the staff etc. They made me the first of the many bibinbaps (a traditional Korean dish that just happens to often be vegetarian, hence the reason for my often eating it while I was there). There was also some kind of soup thing with the meal, which I think might not have been vegetarian. I say that because the web site I visited warned that it wasn't 100% vegetarian, but I couldn't see any meat or fish in the meal they made me, so started eating away. But after drinking this pale soup thing I started to feel pretty sick (of course, it could have been unrelated to the soup, but it was definitely something in the meal, and my gut tells me it was the soup...) and had to stop eating so that I didn't throw up. :-( Which was really unfortunate, because the rest of the meal was really good.

I was about to leave, when the lady at the till started talking to me in English, asking how I found the restaurant, where I'm from, if I'm vegetarian, what I thought of the meal, etc etc. I said it was really good, I was just full so couldn't finish it all. It turns out she was Jennifer, the owner of the restaurant. Then she asked me to sit at the computer behind the till and write a review of the restaurant for the same web site I had found it on earlier (hence explaining why this restaurant had more reviews than all the others!) Not that I suppose that's underhanded or anything, it's not like she told me what to write! But it does explain why it had more reviews than all the others! She then offered to show me some stuff upstairs where they were preparing roots and beans and things, but when we went up there everyone was busy and I wasn't feeling very talkative due to still feeling a little sick from the soup, so I ended up leaving after that. But before I left she said she'd email me some information about Korean vegetarian cooking... :-)

So I went outside, and sat a little way down the road sheltering from the evening sun under a tree waiting for my stomach to settle down a bit. There was a monk sitting there too (according to my guide book there was a temple nearby), and he said something in Korean to me, looking up at the tree / sun and flapping his robes as if to let out the heat from underneath. I smiled and said something along the lines of "yeah, it's hot, hey" in English, flapped my t-shirt a bit to illustrate and leaned back. Then he asked something along the lines of, "!"*&^%£ !*&^%" *&"^%£*& Australia, England, America *£&"%£*£"?" (I just made out the country names in what he was saying), so I said "England" (pointing to myself) he nodded and followed up by asking "&^%£"$&£?", I smiled sheepishly (I think) and tried to shrug as if to say I don't understand, and that's where our conversation ended, and we just sat under the tree for a while.

On the way from the accommodation to the underground I'd noticed a place proudly proclaiming in English to be an "Irish bar", so I headed over there figuring that it was probably a likely place to find people who speak English, and maybe have a few drinks too. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be any English speakers there, nor was there anyone actually sitting at the bar, just people at tables having "Irish" meals and things, staffed by a group of young Korean ladies. Still, I sat at the bar and had a Guinness (ordered by pointing to the Guinness tap and making a drinking motion!), but it looked like I'd just be sitting by myself at the bar the whole evening with nobody even able to understand me, so I wandered back to the guesthouse to sleep (and to be woken up at 3am).

The next day was the planned highlight of the trip, the tour of the demilitarised zone between north and south, and a visit to the "joint security area" (aka Panmunjom), an small encampment on the DMZ technically part of both northern and southern territory, and patrolled by soldiers of both sides since the ceasefire. And yes, they really do offer tours! Visitors aren't allowed into the JSA without a tour guide, so I went with a tour company that I found on Internet before I set off...

Most people on the tour were Japanese, but there was an English speaking couple on the tour as well as me. So there were actually two tour guides, one for the Japanese speakers (probably over twenty altogether) and one for us three English speakers (so we got more personal treatment and were able to ask questions easily etc. :-) )

The first major stop was Dosan railway station. But, even before we got there there were signs that we were heading towards the north. The sides of the motorway were covered with barbed wire, there were regular guard posts, bridges that appeared to have been dismantled, and even "tank traps". Tank traps, they explained to us, are bridges over the road filled with concrete and metal and stuff, plus a load of explosives. The idea being that if the north invades they can explode them and block the roads to slow tanks from reaching the capital.

Dosan railway station is the most northern railway station from Seoul. Apparently there are efforts underway to try and reconnect it with the north, so that trains can run all the way through Korea and into China and Russia etc. The idea apparently being to foster greater cooperation and communication with the north - and hopefully open them up a bit. But also, of course, it would be of great economic benefit to the south, since it would be much cheaper to be able to transport goods to the rest of the world by rail. The station was very large and looked very modern, and was apparently built with money donated from businesses and individuals with an interest in reunification with the north. But it was eerily deserted apart from us tourists, and there were only four trains a day to and from Seoul. Apparently George W Bush had visited the station on a trip to Korea (shortly after upsetting the south by including the north in the "axis of evil"), and they had two railway sleepers on display, one signed by George W Bush and another signed by the then president of Korea. (OK, I don't remember their name... :-$) Amusingly George W Bush's message on the sleeper had some inconsistent use of capital letters, and pretty bad handwriting (as also commented on by some of the other visitors!) I suppose he must have had his mind on more important things. ;-)

The next stop was the "third infiltration tunnel". In the early nineties the north had started digging a series of tunnels under the DMZ and into the south, presumably with the intention of sending armies through them for a surprise attack on the south. But one of the engineers making calculations for the north leaked information about one of them to the south, and after searching the south eventually found five tunnels dug by the north. In the case of the third tunnel, it was discovered while it was still being dug, and it was less than 60km from Seoul, and wide enough to accommodate quite a large number of troops at once. The south dug their own tunnel to intercept the tunnel being dug by the north, and before they intercepted it the north side left their tunnel and, according to the tour guide, then filled it with coal and claimed they were coal mining! (Which looked pretty implausible given the direction and construction of the tunnel, and the hard granite walls that were all that was left over once the coal had been washed away!) We went through the interception tunnel to the north's tunnel and then followed that until it reached the demarcation line between north and south, at which point there were several thick concrete and steel walls blocking our way and we had to turn back.

Next we stopped at an observation post on top of Dosan (a mountain/hill). Apparently there had been fierce fighting for this place during the Korean war because it affords a good view of both Seoul and nearby north Korean towns. We weren't allowed to take photographs from the observation deck, but we could look at some small north Korean towns, the DMZ, JSA etc. through binoculars. We also got a briefing from a south Korean soldier stationed there, who pointed out the various places in crisp, impeccable English.

The last stop of the morning was the freedom bridge, the most northern point that south Koreans are allowed without special permission. The bridge was, obviously, blocked, and covered with flags and banners made by south Koreans who had visited, hoping for peace and reunification (according to the tour guide, I can't read Korean...). There were also various monuments and a park and things dedicated to the same. Also, while we were there a troop of several hundred young teenagers turned up, holding banners and looking very pleased about something! According to our tour guide (again, since I don't know Korean...) they'd just finished walking from the southernmost point of Korea to here, the northernmost point of the south, a journey which took them 14 days in total. Impressive stuff...

After lunch, the tour went on to the joint security area (JSA). The JSA is an encampment in the DMZ, jointly patrolled and maintained by both the north and south. For obvious reasons this meant security was much tighter for this part of the tour - in fact our tour guide had to change because the first one was south Korean, and south Koreans need to go through a large amount of lengthy paperwork to visit there. The JSA is also the part where tourists aren't allowed without an approved guide, whose instructions we were warned to follow precisely, and included such things as not taking photographs in the wrong places, not pointing (presumably it could be mistaken for aiming a weapon), walking in a strict line behind the guide, etc. etc. We also had to go through a security and passport check at camp Bonifas, the NATO camp just before the JSA.

They took us around the JSA, showing us the conference rooms straddling the line separating the north and south patrolled parts of the JSA (we even got to cross over into the north part...), guarded by rather scary looking south Korean soldiers, and the other major parts of the JSA, including a good view of the "bridge of no return" between north and south, and a reasonably close view of the north Korean "propaganda village" with its massive flag pole and uninhabited buildings. Of course there were north Korean soldiers to be seen patrolling too... (we were warned to make absolutely no attempt to communicate with them in any way, including gestures etc...) The JSA tour was definitely the most surreal part of the whole experience. It wasn't so much that it was frightening... just... almost unreal. The tension was palpable though, and I could imagine fighting breaking out at any time.

The bus then took us back to a small gift shop (!) at camp Bonifas, where I bought a bottle of rather fierce looking genuine north Korean alcohol (whoo!), and then out of the camp and back to Seoul. So what did I gain from seeing all of that? To be honest I'm not sure... but at the very least it seems a lot more real than before I saw it with my own eyes.

So after getting back I had a cheap bibinbap at a restaurant near the guesthouse, and then mooched around the shops and the guesthouse for the rest of the evening.

To be continued...

- Teeeeeeeeeeeeea
- Changing of guard, palace, folk museum
- Teeeeeeeeeeeea
- Bus tour (cute conductor girl!)
- N Seoul tower
- Other palace
- San-chon
- Lovely food
- Performance
- Neighbouring table
- Teeeeeeeeeeeeea
- Noisy people dissapear (locked door?)

- Teeeeeeeeeeeea (orange incident)
- Hiking?
- Insa-dong (tea museum, green tea ice cream, fancy art)
- Teaaaaaaaaaaa
- Boat cruise (arg, a pirate's life for me!)
- Train adventure
- Late arrival at museum
- Return to insa-dong for other veggie restaurant
- Revert to bibinbap
- Wonder insa-dong again
- Teaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
- Overhear conversation at guesthouse
(hehe)

- Teaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
- University street (chanting students)
- City hall (preparations)
- Market (Kimchi chocolate)
- "soba"
- airport => home
(wow, appreciate my studing Japanese)

It turns out the TV crew weren't coming from NHK at all... they were coming from CLAIR, i.e. one of the many organisations that seem to be involved in organising the JET programme. They were just making some kind of promotional DVD thingy with videos of people on the programme in it. How did that become NHK? I really have no idea... I'm pretty sure that's what my English teacher told me, and we were speaking in English so I can't blame my rubbish Japanese skills... hmm, I don't know.

Still, I spent five nights in Yakushima the other week, and it was *great*. The time disappeared in the blink of an eye, and there's still loads more stuff I wanted to see there. I stayed at the same place as last time, and again it was really good. The owner clearly really enjoys what he's doing, and genuinely wants everyone to enjoy Yakushima as much as possible while they're there.

This time I managed to see Joumon-sugi - probably the most famous cedar tree on the island (they reckon it might be as much as 7000 years old - and it is indeed very large and impressive and stuff.) I also had some fun driving around the island with some others from the guest house, which involved some stops at the beach, swimming in a mountain river, some gardens... etc, and I had an adventure getting rained on at the top of a mountain, and having to climb down while soaking wet - which also killed my mobile phone. :-( But still, climbing was pretty fun, and I got back safely enough!

But to be honest, the holiday wasn't really about how many things I did or didn't do. (I never felt at a loss for things to do though - and in fact I'll probably go back again at some point.) But really, it was more about relaxing and enjoying the atmosphere of the island (and the guest house!)

Getting back proved to be an adventure again - there was a typhoon just off the coast of Japan on the day I booked to go back, and the area between Kagoshima (in the very south of Kyushu, where I was supposed to land) and Hitoyoshi was experiencing *very* severe rain. Very severe, as in villages getting washed away because the rivers burst their banks, and all the busses and trains being cancelled, and the motorways being closed-severe. My plane was one of the last to land from Yakushima that day, and although the worst of the rain was north of the airport, the airport was experiencing pretty hard rain too. Even the stewardess looked pretty worried while we were landing (when she thought nobody was looking...!) Luckily we landed safely... but...

The busses to Hitoyoshi weren't running (and I didn't bring my car because I didn't want the hassle of parking it at the airport for six days). The trains to Hitoyoshi weren't running. My mobile phone was dead. And all my telephone numbers were stored in my mobile phone. Doh. So I went to the information centre and they looked up the number of the Hitoyoshi city hall for me, and they gave me James' number (nobody I knew was in the office at the time, but luckily for me at that time they seemed to forget about keeping people's personal information confidential... :-S ) So I rang James to let him know what was going on, then found a cheap place to stay in Kagoshima for the night.

The next day though, the busses and trains still weren't running. But, while I was milling around the bus centre trying to figure out whether I should give up and spend another night in Kagoshima or something, I had got talking to a man (who looked like he was about in his 50s) who wanted to get to Fukuoka (right in the north of Kyushu, normally about three hours by motorway *from Hitoyoshi*, in the opposite direction from Kagoshima), and we ended up putting our money together to rent a car, together with another guy who also wanted to get to Fukuoka. However, basically all the roads were out between Kagoshima and Hitoyoshi. We had to drive about half way across Kyushu to the east, before we could start heading north. So stopping every so often to ask for directions on minor roads, listening to weather and traffic reports on the radio etc, the three of us slowly, *slowly* made our way towards Hitoyoshi. In the end it took about four hours to get from Kagoshima to Hitoyoshi, a journey that usually only takes an hour! But, I got back OK, and they continued their journey from Hitoyoshi up to Fukuoka. Proof, I think, that one can at times rely on the kindness of strangers. :-)

So now I've been back at the office for a week. There's a children's English activity thing coming up in just over a week, but more exciting..... (drum roll)... I've booked myself a trip to Korea!!! I'll be leaving on the 10th August, and coming back on the 14th, and am staying at a friendly sounding youth hostel type place in Seoul that I found on Internet.

Knowledge of Korea and the Korean language: none
People I know in Korea: nobody
Plans for when I get there: almost none(*)
People coming with me on the trip: just me and a rucksack

Maybe a little daunting, but I trust that it will turn out well!

(*) There are some interesting (and maybe a little scary) looking tours of the DMZ between south and north though, and I hear they have many impressive temples that have been rebuilt since the Japanese occupation.

Oh, and finally, I also entered myself for 2-kyu on the Japanese Language Proficiency Test - pretty much the standard test of Japanese language ability. The test isn't until December (which is actually a good thing, since I will need to study a bit for it), but I thought it would be a good thing to be able to show for my time here if I had a certificate to show I could speak Japanese to a reasonable level (1-kyu is the highest, and very difficult, level), plus it will give me some incentive to study things I wouldn't normally pay so much attention to (grammatical points that make you sound strange if you get them wrong, but don't actually stop the other person understanding, slight differences in meaning between similar words and characters etc. etc.) Jya, gambarimasu!

Whoooooooo....

I'm terrible at keeping this thing updated... but anyway, I suppose it's well, well, well past the point where I should post something new!

As far as the accident goes, I got some small amount of money from the ferry company (about enough to make a small profit on the Yakushima holiday, but nothing too princely), and haven't heard all that much about it since. Caroline is out of hospital and looking surprisingly fit and healthy - in fact last I heard her and Mike were going off on holiday to Tokyo and then Europe!

Since the last post another term has passed at school - not much different from the previous terms really, but all's going well! There were a few public holidays and other opportunities to do things though -

I visited Beppu a couple of times, a place famous for its hot springs. They do indeed have a lot of hot springs there, and I got the opportunity to be bathed in hot sand (very relaxing), and take a natural mud bath (which was kinda fun!).

I climbed Ichifusa again, this time with a lot of other JETs who we'd invited from elswhere in Kyushu, and went rafting with them as well. Both things I'd done before, but fun the second time too!

There was a concert thing which sounded really cool, but turned out to be tiny and full of rather amateur bands - just good advertising. Still, was kind of fun.

Then there was a conference for recontracting JETs up in Kobe. It was cool to take the plane all the way up there and stay in a posh hotel and stuff - but apart from going out for drinks in the evening there was no time to explore the city properly since I'd been booked onto the plane leaving almost as soon as the conference finished (and changing the plane tickets wasn't an option, apparently).

Ummm, there was a wedding yesterday too. Josh, teaching in Asagiri, married Manami. They'd been engaged for at least as long as I've been here, and seem very happy together. There was a big wedding party with some of Josh's friends and relatives visiting from the US, and lots of Manami's friends and relatives too, much food and cake and some booze... :-) Good stuff!

Term's coming to an end very soon, but apparently there's going to be a TV crew from NHK come to film one of the lessons with me in at junior high school - I don't make the lesson plans at junior high school though, so it's pretty much all the Japanese teacher of English's work that's gone into it. I'm not entirely sure I want to be on TV, but still...

I'm also going back to Yakushima in about a week, since I got a few days off what with not having many classes at the end of term! Hopefully I can see some of the places that I didn't get to see last time, and have a safer journey (this time I'm taking the plane...)

Looks like the ship didn't hit a whale after all, investigators apparently found a small amount of wood in the dent at the bottom of the ship, and no blood or anything that would suggest a whale. So what exactly did we hit? Maybe some debris that happened to be floating in the sea?

It doesn't seem to have made it to the English news, but there's a short article in Japanese, not that it says much more than what I wrote here.

Well, I suppose it's about time I posted. I've certainly had an eventful time.

I hinted at it in the post before last, but I was involved in a relationship since just after the new year. But no, I'm not going to post all the details on Internet for everyone. There wasn't a great deal to be posted here until I went to Yakushima, so I'll just skip to that. Sorry.

Before that though, I suppose I'll mention again that I decided to recontract for another year. I don't feel that I'd be satisfied with just one year here. The time has been passing really quickly, and it still feels like I've only been here a short time. Whatever it is I decide to do when I get back can wait another year (not that I'm really sure what I want to do yet...). Opportunities like this don't come along very often and I think I should make the most of it. Of course I miss home at times, but I'm not going to be living here forever. Anyway, I suppose the short version is I'm enjoying it and want to stay on.

So school was off for a couple of weeks of spring holiday, and Mike, Caroline (other JETs) and I decided to spend a weekend in Yakushima. My girlfriend said she was busy and couldn't afford it anyway, so didn't come along. It's an island just south of Kagoshima, the southernmost reasonably-large city in Kyushu, about 25Km in diameter (sorry, they measure everything in Km here), famed for its natural beauty and hiking trails etc. In fact, a large part of the island has been designated a "World Heritage Site", and was one of the first places in Japan to receive that status. It's a pretty popular travel destination among Japanese people, but not so well known abroad.

I had the Friday off work, but Caroline and Mike couldn't take it off, so I decided to go down a day ahead of them. Originally I was going to drive down and take my car on the ferry, but this turned out to be marginally more expensive than taking the bus and renting a car on the island, so I went for that option instead. That also meant I could ride the high speed "Toppy" ferry instead, giving a few more hours on the island on the Sunday. So I took the bus down to Kagoshima on Friday morning, and then the Toppy ferry over to the island. We'd booked into a really nice place called the "Chinryuu-an", although I didn't realise how great it was until I got there. I just booked us in to it because it was cheap and recommended by the Lonely Planet guide. Anyway, when I rang the accommodation before arriving they said they were quite far from the port, so they'd send someone to pick me up. To my surprise, it turned out it was Mr. Chinryuu himself came to pick me up! He and another lady, Maiya (I think that's how it's written, but I didn't ask), run the place together. They were really friendly, and the place had a great atmosphere. There were several bunk beds in each room where everyone slept, youth hostel style, but the main communal area was really nice with wooden floors, a large window looking out over the sea... and just... a certain something that made it almost perfect.

It was already mid-day by the time I arrived, so Chinryuu reckoned I should borrow a bike from them for the rest of the afternoon and cycle around the island a bit. This sounded good to me too, so that's what I did. The air was really fresh and invigorating, and the weather was good, and the scenery too. I ran into some elementary school children coming back from school too, and talked with them for a bit. And dropped in on a park / garden type thing with wild monkeys and a beautiful pond with flowers and things planted around it. Anyway, it was really good. I got back to the accommodation around 6, dropped into a local shop to buy some ingredients for dinner, went back to the accommodation and cooked my evening meal. Everyone staying there had dinner at the same time, since Chinryuu and Maiya cooked dinner for everyone else (not me since I'm veggie), and I timed my cooking so I could eat with them. I think there were about 8 of us staying there that night, and everyone was traveling alone (the place was advertised as being good for lone travelers), with the result that there weren't any cliques or anything and everyone just sat around eating, drinking and chatting until bed. But again there was just a really nice, relaxed atmosphere. It wasn't like a rowdy drinking party, just a friendly group of mostly-young travelers, many who seemed a little introverted (i.e. a bit like me, and perhaps a common trait among those traveling alone, particularly in Japan) passing the evening in each others' company. I'm not sure if that came out right, but anyway, I felt comfortable there.

The next day I rented the car, again from the Chinryuu-an, and again for a very good price, and went to pick up Mike and Caroline from the port first thing in the morning. We then went on a hike starting from Shiratani-unsuikyo, through the Mononoke-hime forest, and finishing with a climb up a short peak to a large rock looking out from up high over a rich green valley and towards Miyanoura-san, the largest mountain on the island. The Mononoke-hime forest was so named because it was the inspiration for the forest in Miyazaki's film Princess Mononoke, and indeed there was an astonishing resemblance between the two. There may not have been forest spirits, but there were the moss-covered trees and rocks (including massive cedar trees some several thousand years old), and wild deer and other animals. There's not really much to say except that it was beautiful. I'll post some photos at some point, but really it doesn't come out as well in the photos as it does in reality. We sat and ate packed lunches in the spring sun on top of the rock looking out over the valley, with the sea visible behind us. Then we got back to the accommodation and the three of us spent the evening with the other guests, me also taking a dip in the nearby on-sen.

The next day we went to Yakusugi-land, a trail around a part of the forest with a large number of old cedar trees, massive things usually several thousand years old. Again it was an amazing walk, with waterfalls and some small peaks, and the cedar trees were indeed impressive. Unfortunately we had to leave eventually, after checking out of the accommodation, to make it to the last Toppy ferry back home. Chinryuu dropped us off at the port with about 10 minutes to spare, we bought some last minute gifts from the souvenir shop, jumped onto the ferry and started heading back home. The sky was just starting to darken with what looked like rain clouds (it had been lovely and sunny all weekend up until then), and I drifted off to sleep in my seat...

BANG!!!!!!!!11111one

There was a almighty thump, and the upper half of me was immediately thrown forwards into the seat in front. The high speed ferry cruises at about 80 km/h, and it immediately stopped to pretty much zero, so you can imagine it was quite a shock. Fortunately they had seatbelts, which they required everyone to wear (and almost everyone did wear them, despite what the papers implied later), but they only went around the waist, so even those wearing them got thrown around in their seats a lot. My head was slammed into the seat in front of me, and blood spilled out of what I later discovered was a gash above my eye, and from my nose, all over my clothes. Caroline and Mike were sitting in front of me, and Caroline started screaming that her back hurt, so Mike stood up and lay her down gently on the two seats. About simultaneously a British guy sitting behind me (I realised he was British later) stood up and shouted "I know first aid!", he passed me some tissues to stop the blood, and went around helping Caroline and the others who had been hurt. We were very lucky he was there, the staff appeared to have some first aid training but didn't seem sure about what to do at all. The British guy was pretty much in charge from that point on.

The engines seemed to have completely stopped, and we floated at sea with nothing really happening for about three hours. Yes, that's with people like Caroline who were seriously injured on there too. Then a coast guard doctor arrived on a helicopter, and he definitely knew what he was doing and just took charge of the whole thing. A guy with internal bleeding was taken off the ship on the helicopter, and another ship came shortly afterwards to take off the other seriously injured passengers, including Caroline. Mike went on the ship too to be with her. Then another ship came to tow the Toppy back to the nearest port with the non-seriously injured passengers (including me) still on it.

When we got to the port there were media crews, gawkers, staff, the red cross, buses, ambulances, and all sorts of things waiting for us. I was herded to the red cross tent, where they had a look at my head, decided it wasn't an emergency but I should go to a hospital to have someone look at it, and let me know which bus to get on to go to the same hospital as Mike and Caroline. I was asked by three or four media crews if I would give an interview, but as you can probably imagine I just wanted to get home at that point, so I declined. Most people got on the bus to the hospital in Kagoshima city, but since Mike and Caroline had been taken to the nearest hospital to the port I took that bus instead, along with two or three other passengers and some people from the ferry company. When we got there a man from the ferry company checked me into the hospital, and a doctor looked at my cut. He thought it was OK, but I should go to a nearby neurosurgery to make sure there wasn't any other damage that couldn't be seen on the surface. Before that I popped in to see Mike and Caroline. Caroline had indeed broken her back, and was lying in the hospital bed, suprisingly happy, but apparently on quite a lot of pain killers. She couldn't move much, but apparently they thought she would be OK after further surgery and about a month in hospital. The man from the ferry company then took me to the neurosurgeon, who x-rayed and CTed my head, decided there were no problems and told me to come back the next day. Then the ferry company man checked me into a pretty posh room in a pretty posh hotel (which later turned out to be owned by the same company).

When I woke up in the hotel in the next day I put on the TV, and there was a special programme all about the ferry accident (i.e. it wasn't just on the news, it had special programming just for the accident). I appeared on the TV stepping off the ferry (this shot was also seen by many of my teachers and people at school, as I later found out), and they said they thought it had probably hit a whale, although they were still investigating.

After breakfast a man from the hotel (I think he was the manager, he was definitely a big-wig at the hotel anyway) took me back to the neurosurgeon, who put some things on the wound, and referred me to Hitoyoshi hospital. Then we went to Kagoshima hospital, which was where Caroline had been transferred the previous night. Apparently she had broken three vertebrae, and if she had been on the ship much longer may not have been able to walk again. She seemed in good spirits though. After talking for a while some people from the Hitoyoshi board of education arrived to collect me and took me back to Hitoyoshi, followed by dinner and then back to my apartment to sleep. Caroline was later transferred to Yatsushiro hospital, where she had surgery and is apparently slowly beginning to be able to walk again.

Later that week a couple of men from the ferry company came to visit while I was at elementary school. They apologised to me, and gave me some money as an o-mimai (money traditionally given to sick people), and gave me a number to ring if I had any mental distress from the accident or any other problems. They said they still thought it was probably a whale, but didn't have any firm evidence of what it could be. The next day I had a visit to the hospital, which decided there was nothing to be worried about with the cut above my eye, and unless something unusual happened I didn't have to come back. And in the afternoon I had visit from the coast guard, who took a statement from me, which was written up, signed and stamped with my official stamp. And that's the last contact I've had with anything official to do with the accident.

On Saturday night my now-ex girlfriend and I broke up, but there had been problems for a while so it wasn't completely unforeseen. And now you're pretty much up to date I suppose...

I know I posted a comment saying I'd update on Monday... but, well, I think I have an excuse this time.

I'm pretty tired now, since I've had a lot to do over the last few days, so I'll post something longer later. The short version though is that, as I posted in the comments section of the previous post, I went to Yakushima. Yakushima was great, but on the way back the hydrofoil ferry had an accident. I'm OK, but lots of things happened as a consequence that have taken up much of my time since then. The accident was in the national news here. But just to repeat, apart from being tired and having some cuts and bruises I am fine.

Also, I made my decision quite a while ago but it didn't make it to my journal yet either... and this may not be the best post in which to break the news, but I decided to recontract for another year, which means I'll be in Japan until at least July 2007. It's not that I don't miss everyone at home, it's just that I'm having a good time here (bar accidents) and one more year here probably won't make much difference to whatever it is I'll do when I get back.

Anyway, please nag me to post a longer version if I don't get round to it in a timely manner.

Yes, I'm still alive down in Japan! I've been having a pretty good time over the last month. The things I'm prepared to admit to include:

Driving around a bit to see nearby (and a few not so nearby) places. The car's still going good, and is a lot of fun to drive. Unfortunately though, all the cash mashines closed for three days around the new year. Doh! And most places don't take credit cards, so there was one trip to Kagoshima around then that ended up with me going and coming back without doing much of anything. Still, good stuff.

Going snowboarding for a couple of days with James, up in Shimane-ken. This was indeed pretty cool (literally too!). I just rented the gear and had a go, rather than taking lessons or anything. James had been before though, so he showed me the basics. At first I couldn't get more than a few yards without falling over, but by the end of the two days I could do the beginners' course without falling over! Yay! I still have a really dodgy technique for turning to the right though, so if I go back I'll need to fix that before tackling the more difficult courses. Here's a photo I took on my phone:



Shortly after getting back to school for the new year there was a trip with the members of the board of education to climb Karaguni-dake, a nearby mountain (not that tall though). It was pretty good fun, and I was actually one of the better climbers there (if I do say so myself)!

My birthday (24th Jan) was pretty low key, but good, and I even got a few presents from people here. :-)

I got my car! It's a 1 litre light metalic green Nissan March:



Unfortunately I can't use it much yet. :-(

Just as I was about to drive off yesterday, my supervisor asked:

Supervisor: Do you understand the rules of the road?
Tom: Uhh... Yes, I do.
Supervisor: You understand everything in that book?
(the Japanese highway code book I had on my desk)
Tom: Uhh... I think I do.
Supervisor: You think you do? It's different from the UK, right?
Tom: Yeah...
Supervisor: Are you sure you understand them?
Tom: Yeah, I'm sure. I'll be fine. (not sounding very convincing...)
Supervisor: Hmm... I know it's a pain, but until we've gone over the rules of the road with you, don't use your car except for going to and from school, OK?
Tom: OK, I suppose so.

There was also a nice case of (what I will assume to be) cultural misunderstanding when the car first turned up. The dealer drove it to the car park at the board of education, and I went down to have a look at it along with a few others from the office. I was going to drive it around the car park a bit at first, and before I started it up one of the others from the office (Mr. X) got into the passenger seat. He's reasonably high up in our section's chain of command, and was, so to speak, the person with the most authority there. He's helped me out quite a few times, and is generally quite a decent guy. So no problem, he wanted to come along / make sure I didn't do anything silly. Bear in mind this is a manual, and most Japanese cars are automatics...

I got driving along a bit, and changed up to second...

Mr. X: Is that second?
Tom: Yep.
Mr. X: Oh. Change into third...

I change into third. He's watching where I put the stick...

I drive around and get the car back to the parking space, then start to reverse into it...

Mr. X: OK, now use the brake.

The car was moving *really* slowly, and using the brake would have brought the car to a pretty sudden stop. I just continued what I was doing, which was gently letting up the clutch so the car would move back slowly, and dipping it back in to slow down or stop. I don't know if he realised I wasn't using the brake though. I didn't say anything. I stopped the car, in neutral with the hand brake on.

Mr. X: When you stop, make sure you always put it in neutral before releasing the clutch.
Tom: Yeah... (this is what I had done)
Mr. X: Otherwise it could jerk forward and cause an accident.
Tom: Yeah, I know...
Mr. X: (continues explaining how to stop the car safely... all exactly how I had just stopped it.)
Tom: Yeah... Yeah... Yeah...
Tom: (feeling patronised) I do have a licence.
Mr. X: Well, be careful OK.

This didn't occur to me at the time, but I later recalled a conversation with my Japanese teacher in the UK. She didn't think that there was a good Japanese word for being patronising, and that most Japanese people would probably see things we see as patronising as just being especially helpful or concerned (i.e. as good things).

Anyway, we get out, and stand around for a bit chatting and looking at the car with the others from the office.

Mr. X: Gimme your keys!

I gave him my keys, he was so direct I didn't really think before doing it. He immediately jumped into the driver's seat, without asking, and started up the engine.

Had this been the UK, I would have been pretty furious. It's not so much that I mind him having a go in my car, but he didn't even bother to ask first!

However, I recalled reading something back at uni... according to this book, whereas in the UK superiors at work are only taken to be superiors *in the context of the work*, and can't order you around when it comes to other things, in Japan it's normal for them to be able to boss you about with regards to things not directly related to work too. I suspect this may have been an instance of this... but I'm not 100% sure. It could have been a case of "Tom doesn't understand Japanese very well, he won't realise I'm being impolite / won't kick up a fuss." He's generally a decent guy though, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt. I'll keep my eyes open to see if this is normal behaviour or not though.

Anyway, he drove it around the car park, revving the engine pretty high. Then he brought it to a stop and stalled. He started up again, and parked in a very stop-start way, clearly using the brake too much. In fact, he stopped trying to park it almost as soon as he could get away with it. There was still a massive amount of room to move the car into.

He got out, and proceeded to lecture me on how he *had* to tell me about stopping safely. It was just for my own safety, etc, etc. At this point I had recalled what my Japanese teacher said, so I was about to try and explain, but he stormed off back into the building. Oh well... nobody else batted an eyelid.

Anyway, I drove it home (by a slightly longer than necessary route), and to school this morning. It seems pretty good. It's very tempting just to go off driving though!

Things continuing much as before... which is to say, pretty good. :-)

Let's see... since my last post, I got to see the best shamisen player in Japan, drank too much tequila, ran 2.5 Km in a relay race, and started the process towards buying a car. Not all in the same day, fortunately.

The shamisen player came to play at Ichuu, the largest school I teach at. Apparently he's touring schools giving performances because his father is also a famous shamisen player, and when his father played at his school it inspired him to take up the instrument. Apparently he'd won the national shamisen contest three years in a row (his father came in second!), and he was indeed very good. He's coming back to Hitoyoshi next year too, so I'll have to see his performance then.

Tequila... well, went to a party. One of the other ALTs had brought some high quality, easy to drink tequila from Mexico... yep.

The race, was fine. I wasn't that fast in the end, but I didn't do too badly. The only annoying thing was that the opening ceremony was at 8am, the race didn't start until 10am, I didn't get to run until about 10:20, I finished my section before 10:35, and the closing ceremony finished at about 2:30pm. Yep, many, many hours of standing around doing nothing to run for less than 15mins. Then I think I upset some of the other people at the after race party by not drinking and going home early, since I was tired and had to teach elementary school tomorrow. It's OK for them, they wouldn't be the ones turning up hung over and tired to a school full of elementary students expecting a lively and exciting foreigner!

I should be getting a car some time next week, the paper work has been set in motion. Yay! I won't have to ride my bike everwhere or rely on others to give me lifts. Oh, and it's manual transmission too, which is relatively unusual here. I think that's good, because it's what I'm used to driving... hopefully I haven't missed some obvious drawback!

I apologise in advance for the disjointed nature of this post, for some reason I've lost all ability to write sensibly today... (this may be related to the alcohol I may have consumed last night...)

This Wednesday was a public holiday, but a mini volleyball game between the staff at the city hall had been arranged, so of course we also had to practice after work several times the week before and on the Monday before the actual game.

Plus points: going out for drinks after practising and after the game itself
Minus point: we lost our first game, and so never got anywhere in the tournament.

At first I didn't really want to do it, especially since it meant practising after work and giving up holiday time. But the parties made up for it, I think.

[For those of you who don't know (I didn't) mini-volleyball is like regular volleyball, but with a lighter ball. For those who don't know about volleyball either (again I didn't), ask google or something!]

Last weekend James and I got treated to tea ceremony and udon by a lady he taught English last year, or something, I think. It was pretty cool.

I've also been entered for a relay race to be held near the beginning of next month. I'll be running about 2.5km, and have been practising for that too, and quite enjoy it, surprisingly. I think I averaged between 10 and 11 minutes a mile yesterday (I don't know exactly how far I ran, except by measuring it in a slightly dodgy way on the map), which I'm pretty pleased about.

After running yesterday I had nothing much to do in the evening, so I went to a bar and talked to a pretty girl. Nice.

Oh, I got some new glasses too.

Not much news really. Last weekend there was a dance competition in town, so I went to have a look, and went drinking with some JETs and others afterwards. Then the next day I we were invited to dinner by a friend of one of the people I went with, which was pretty cool.

There was some kind of health check thing for workers at the city hall around the beginning of the month. This involved urine samples, blood samples, x-rays, sight and hearing tests... all so they could tell me "you're perfectly healthy, except for your being pretty short sighted in your right eye." Cool, thanks, I didn't know that already...

This weekend I went to see "Brothers Grim" in the cinema at Yatsushiro with Yoko. It was good fun, but probably not worth going out of your way to watch. Made for a good day out though.

Today was a culture festival at Ichuu. I didn't have to go, but they asked if I would like to, so I said I "might", which they took to be a yes... it started at 8:50am and went on until just after 2pm. But I was really tired, the hall was cold, I didn't understand much of the plays, and I wanted my day off to myself, so I slipped out around 11am and went back home via the convenience store, snacked on some noodles, went back to bed and slept until around 2pm.

Then I bought a new coat to help fend off the increasing coldness, it's pretty nice too I think.

Hi again! Two weeks since my last update, I can see it's gradually getting longer and longer between them... :-(

Anyway, the Sunday after my last post I climbed mount Ichifusa, the largest mountain in the vicinity of Hitoyoshi (and I think significantly further than Hitoyoshi too!). It was good fun, and felt good to get outdoors with nature for a while. I went on my own, since partly I wanted to get away from everything for a while. But guess what I found at the summit? A quiet breeze? Nope. A large group of elementary school children out on a school trip climbing the mountain! Still, it was kind of good, I managed to get a lift back to the bus stop from the bottom of the mountain from one of the teachers, and may have missed the bus otherwise. And the kids were quite sweet.

Anyway, I don't recall doing anything particularly spectacular the next week. I took the adult conversation class on Wednesday... I think I stretched them more than they were used too, but they enjoyed it! It seems they haven't actually had that many opportunities to actually *use* English rather than study it, if you see what I mean.

Last Saturday there was a tea tasting/explanation session organised by a Mr. Tateyama who owns a tea shop in Hitoyoshi. He had stopped by the board of Education for some reason (I think maybe he supplies them with tea!), and said that if I got together a group of interested people he'd teach us about Japanese tea. So I did, and he did. There were about eleven of us in the end. I had no idea so many other people would be interested. Basically he showed us some of their high quality green teas, explained the differences between the different varieties, and how they should be brewed. Lots of fun! And good tea too! There was a newspaper reporter there too, and we ended up getting a small story in the local paper.

Afterwards we went to the house of Mike, the JET in Itsuki, and drank a bit and played Risk until the early hours. I hadn't played Risk before. It was pretty fun, but took forever to play. We stopped playing around 4am, and didn't even finish the game!

This week I had a pretty nasty cold. I still have a stuffy nose now. And blowing your nose in public is impolite here, so it's been pretty inconvenient! (Have to keep finding toilets and things to do it in.)

Today I went to Kumamoto city in search of winter clothes, but they were all either good but really expensive, or horrible and cheap. Gah. So I didn't buy anything. I'll probably just go to uni-clo down the road instead. I did find a really nice "Cotswold's" tea shop though. They had *really* good quality black tea, and a big union jack outside the shop. If only they actually had tea shops like that in the UK. They had really good quality tea leaves (you could choose from different varieties, clippings, seasons...) and good china, and they brought the tea pot (with a cosy!) to your table with an egg timer to show how long you should leave it to brew for. It's safe to say I will be going back. Whenever I can. :-)

Nope, I didn't go missing in Nagasaki... I just didn't update my journal for another week!

Anyway, Nagasaki was a lot of fun. We (some other JETs from Kuma-gun and I) left by car Friday evening, and arrived at our hotel in Nagasaki around midnight. First thing the next morning we went to see the Okunchi festival, including the famous "dragon dance":



It was pretty cool. The dragon part was representing the Chinese residents of the city. They also had a bit for the Dutch settlers who landed there too, with some sort of ship and some large dinner plates and things. A lot of the festival seemed to involve people spinning large objects as fast as they could for some reason... I'm not really sure what was going on there. It started to drag a bit, as the whole thing took three hours, but it was worth seeing.

Then we explored the city a bit for the rest of the day. This included a visit to the "Glover Gardens", where a Thomas Glover lived some time ago, the Nagasaki China Town (with lots of Chinese restaurants), and an interestingly named "Fukken street", which caused much amusement among some of the JETs:



We also rode a cable car to see the city at night:



And finished the evening by going for a meal and then on to a club until the early hours. All good fun.

The next morning we visited the peace park and atomic bomb museum. The museum is basically a brief description of the events leading up to the bombing, then a collection of artifacts from when the city was bombed... mangled pieces of buildings, things from people's homes, and so on... followed by some eyewitness accounts and poems and things written by people who were there. Some of the things there really brought home how insanely powerfull the blast must have been. There were roof tiles with large bubbles in them, panels showing the silhouette of whatever was in front of them, a cup that had fused with the bones in somebody's hand... as for the eyewitness accounts, well... you could hear people sniffing back tears as they read them.

For some reason though, one of the things that got to me the most was a small scroll painting near the end, where somebody who survived the initial blast had painted what he saw, and written some words along the top to describe it. It was a view across looking across the harbour from the hills on one side to the hills on the other, and there was fire rolling across the landscape, the city burning, and charred bodies climbing up the hills.

The actual of presentation of everything was very matter of fact about it all though. Actually, extremely matter of fact. The English translations used slightly "coloured" words, if you see what I mean, but from what I read of the Japanese it was just a very precise factual description of the exhibits. It kind of added to the power of some of the exhibits, as if words were not really enough to do them justice. The Japanese name for the building doesn't really mean museum either, maybe something more like "atomic bomb materials hall".

This was the centre of the blast:



And this sign shows ground level before the bombing:



After stopping at a Chinese restaurant for lunch we went back home.

Monday was a public holiday, but I didn't really do much.

Wednesday I played Karuta, a card game that's originally from Portugal but came to Kuma-gun some time ago, with some people in Hitoyoshi. It was pretty fun. Basically like trumps, but with different cards (IIRC 6 suits with 15 cards in each suit), and some changes to the rules so that it actually requires quite a bit of skill... hopefully I'll get to play again some time.

Thursday was tennis again, I think I'm improving.

I haven't done much yet this weekend, I've just been taking it easy.

OK, I've been a bit lazy lately and not bothered updating. Sorry.

Last Thursday we had a meeting for all the JETs and Japanese English teachers in Kuma-gun, so we all got a day off school. To be honest it was a little boring though... there were some good lesson ideas, but it was mostly sitting around and listening to people talk about nothing of much relevance to actual day to day teaching. Oh well. It made a change though.

Saturday was rafting on the Kuma river! It was great, and I'm pretty glad I went, since I only signed up for it at the last minute. There were about sixteen of us between three small rubber boats, and it involved swimming in the river (with life jackets!), jumping of rocks, going down rapids, and all sorts of cool stuff. There was also a nice lunch prepared for us, and a soak in the on-sen to finish up. The water wasn't particularly cold either, and was actually quite refreshing on such a warm day. Unfortunately I have no photos, since my camera and phone can't cope with water, and I didn't feel like buying a waterproof camera specially for the day. Then we went out for food and drink in the evening. I think I've discovered a technique for getting better vegetarian food here. It's very simple - rather than just telling them what I can't eat, I tell them that I *can* eat egg, cheese, tofu etc.! Anyway, it was all a lot of fun.

Sunday I cycled to the Jusco (about half an hour from my apartment), and found a nice cycle route on the way back:



And a "hidden" Buddha (that's what the sign said...):



Also, I saw this earlier, but didn't post it here. There's a red London bus outside Higashi Elementary School:



Monday to Wednesday I was teaching at Sanchuu. Since it's such a small school, with less than 60 students, I won't be going back again until next month. Seemed kind of strange to be there for three days, and then at the end just say "ok, see you next month...!".

Wednesday evening was my first adult conversation class. The "warm up" activity (interviewing and then introducing another person to the rest of the class) ended up taking the entire lesson though, so there wasn't really any need to prepare. It was kind of fun, but a bit tiring after teaching all day too.

In other news, I appeared in the latest Hitoyoshi magazine. I wrote a self-introduction in English, and they translated it into Japanese for me. My Japanese still isn't really good enough to write something worth reading of that length - I could probably get the facts across, but it would read terribly. I'm really pleased with the translation though, it came out really well, perhaps better than the original! :-)

The weather is becoming more rainy. It's starting to look like the UK, with overcast skies and regular but unpredictable showers! For some reason I actually quite enjoyed it when it started being rainy and overcast... it felt more like home. Really! :-S Still pretty warm though, I'm wearing short sleeve tops to work.

Tennis was cancelled today. I'm going to Nagasaki this weekend though. There's some kind of festival going on. Should be fun!

Why is it that I can download data without a single bit error, from half way around the world, and at over 150 kb/sec, for no charge except the monthly fee, but when I make a standard international voice call it costs 100 yen / minute, sounds rubbish, and cuts out every other word that I say?

I tried to ring my bank (HSBC) the other day to change the options for paying my credit card by direct debit. I used to have it set to debit the full amount every month, but when I bought my laptop I changed that to the minimum amount because I couldn't afford to pay it straight away. Now I've been working for a while I've transfered some money back to my UK account, and wanted to change back to paying the full amount again.

When I changed to paying the minimum amount, I somehow managed to get through to a lady with a British accent. The conversation went something like this:

Me: I'd like to change... (explained what I wanted)
Her: No problem. Just a second...
Her: OK, from next month we'll charge the minimum amount. Have a good day!
Me: Thanks!

This time the phone line was so bad that I couldn't even operate the automated system that asks you to "press 1 for...", "press 2 for..." etc. Then I got transferred to someone with an Indian accent, and I got the impression that it wasn't in the UK. The conversation went from bad to worse as she tried to figure out what I wanted. It was probably something like this, though this is from memory:

Me: (explained what I wanted)
Her: Do you want to pay the full amount on your credit card?
Me: I want to pay the full amount *every month* by direct debit.
Her: We can't change the direct debit.
Me: But they changed it just a few months ago...
Her: We can cancel it and set up a new one.
Me: But will I have to fill in forms and things?
(Yes! a bit later...)
Her: Or we can set up a standing order.
Me: No, I don't want a standing order. I want (repeat what I want...)
Her: So what direct debit do you want to cancel?
Me: NO! NO! NO! I don't want to cancel anything! I want (repeat what I want...)

She eventually said that the line was too bad and I should ring back later. The conversation above omits the many times I was asked to repeat what I said, or put on hold, etc. It was a little scary having a woman who obviously had no idea what I wanted operating the controls to my bank account. :-S

Right, so now that's out of the way.

James - thank you very much for the card from Peru! It arrived today. Hope the rest of your trip goes well.

Nick - by the time you read this I expect you'll be in Japan, so a big "nihon e yokoso" to you! I can't throw you a very good welcome party down in Hitoyoshi, since you probably can't get here very easily straight away, but I'll drink a glass of shouchu for you! I'm sure you'll have a brilliant year.

I found the party. It was at the same hotel as the on-sen! :-O

To be completely honest, it was a bit dissappointing. I didn't even get to participate, just sit there watching children run around for just over 6 hours. It was reasonably entertaining for the first half hour or so, but... However, Fujiyama-san from the board of education invited me to the picnic with his family during the lunch break, which was very delicious and probably the highlight of the day.

No sign of any party. I think I'll go to the on-sen again.