July

We're well into July now. The weather here in Tango is hot and humid. It's not so much a "high temperatures" kind of hot just now, but more a "heavy and humid" kind of hot. The rainy season is coming to an end, and summer is starting to appear. There have been a couple of days this week with sunny blue skies. No rain forecast for today either.
The rice paddies are bright green and beautiful, the mountains are a lush dark green, the sea is every colour you could imagine, sparkling and warm. The sand is warm too. Japanese people are tanning and I am turning pink.
It's a fantastic time of year. Summer holidays start next Friday and that means so too does the summer festival season. My favourite.
But with all the wonderful things July brings, it is also the month that non-recontracting JETs leave. This year there are only a few JETs leaving Tango. New people will be coming to Yosano, Ine, and Kyotango City (Kumihama and Mineyama...maybe?). It's always sad to see people go, but for those who are leaving, I hope your preparations go well and that you have a great final few weeks here. For those who are coming here (and I say that because I know many people google the area and my blog often comes up... so if you are reading...) good luck with YOUR preparations and I hope you have a nice flight over, an enjoyable Tokyo conference and the rest of us are all really looking forward to meeting you when you get up here!! You are so lucky to be placed in the Tango area. It's got all the benefits of country life, but still within comparatively easy travelling distance to Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe. Feel free to leave a comment here if you like. I don't know anyone's email address yet, so this is my only way to "touch bases" as it were.

In other news, um... all my butterflies hatched and flew away. I felt so proud! ...haha
Sorry, no pictures this time. Though I promise to put some up next time.

Caterpillar Caught in the Act!!

As I wrote about in the entry below, we have caterpillars in our flower pots. Well, yesterday I just happened to spot one of them as it was turning itself into a chrysalis...SO... I got out my digital camera and recorded the whole process. Then today I edited the footage (sped it up and added a soundtrack). The music is one of my all time favourite piano pieces: Transcedental Etude "Mazzepa" by Liszt. It's my first time having a go at time-lapse stuff, so forgive the imperfections. I think it's kind of cool though...

Caterpillars Everywhere

Liz and I grow flowers in pots on her front doorstep. In fact, we just put new flowers out there this past weekend since the previous ones were pretty much finished. You see, we had a few pots of really bright and colourful pansies out there before. They grew like crazy and flowered so much that they formed a bright blotch of colour noticeable from the end of the street!! The neighbours commented to me a few times how pretty the flowers were. However, after a couple of months they started to come to the end of their lives. They got straggly and yellowish. They the leaves started disappearing so I took them out back where nobody could see them and replaced them with different plants. The front steps look colourful and pretty again.
The other day when I went out back to dig up the dying pansies and replace them with something else, I noticed they were covered in big black caterpillars with orange and black spikes and an orange stripe. I guess these critters had something to do with the mysterious disappearance of the leaves... I like caterpillars so I left them there to finish off the straggly remains of the pansies. I went out this morning to check on them, and found that two of them had turned into chrysalides and one was hanging upside down about to do so too. I watched him for about half an hour while he wriggled around and gradually turned into a chrysalis! It was so cool to watch. The chysalides are brown with gold spots.

I researched online and found out that these were in fact the caterpillars of the Indian Fritillary butterfly (Argyreus hyperbius). Here's a picture of what they will look like when they hatch:

(left: male; right: female)

I'm growing tomatoes out back, too. I hate tomatoes. I can't eat them, and the mere smell of them makes me feel queezy, but Liz likes them, and I like growing them, so it will work out just fine. We have two varieties, pear shaped ones, and cherry tomatoes. They're not ripe yet, but here's what they look like at present:

Sunset Hunters

Yesterday, Liz and I drove to Hamazume (part of Amino) to see the sunset. It's particularly beautiful when viewed from the beach there. However, for some reason the sun seemed to set much later than we had expected so we found ourselves with plenty time up our sleeves before sunset. We decided to take a random drive to Kumihama (well, actually, it just kind of happened... we just went for a drive and ended up in Kumihama...haha). The beach we stopped at there was beautiful! I had been there a few times before, but this was my first time there at sunset (early sunset) and it was really nice. The water was warm and the sand was pristine. Everything had a vivid sort of glow to it thanks to the slowly setting sun. I took a few pictures:

While we were enjoying the beach at Kumihama, the sun started to sink lower in the now golden sky. We decided to head back to Hamazume to enjoy the sunset from there (can't believe I just said "enjoy the sunset"...been in Japan too long!) Below are a couple of photos from the beach at Hamazume. If you click on the panorama one, you will be able to see it bigger.We found ourselves with still a few minutes before that fleeting peak moment when the sky turns brilliant shades of red, orange, yellow, gold, pink, purple, etc... and the whole lot gets reflected in even more beauty in the sea.. that briefest moment just before the sun sinks to the horizon and touches its reflection. There's just something about watching the sun set across the Sea of Japan... it's really great. We decided to take a gamble and drive along the windy coast road back to Asamogawa, and view the sunset from the cliffs. We only had a few minutes, and there was a chance we might not get there in time before it was all over, but we took that chance, and made it. Unfortunately, just as it was about to peak, a cloud appeared from nowhere and masked the sun. STILL, I managed to get a couple of OK photos before that point. Here is my favourite:

Ine Revisited

We went for another trip to Ine yesterday. It's right at the tip of the Tango Peninsular. It's really beautiful, and actually there are a number of small isolated villages in the Ine area. They each have a certain something that makes them fascinating places to visit.
Sunday was a hot day, but a little windy in Ine. We had a great time. Here are a few photos, mainly of Nii:

Perhaps you could call this the "main road" in the fishing village of Nii.

Looking over the rooftops of Nii to the Sea of Japan below.

Sea of Japan

Terraced rice paddies with a view

Hydrangeas (bloom in the rainy season here)

Honjo beach

Don't Challenge; Accept!

It's the rainy season here now. It's been raining on and off for a number of days. Every now and then there's a respite and sun shines through, but the rain inevitably returns. Yesterday there was a break in the rain. Liz was about to come back from work and I figured she might like a coke. So I walked to the nearest vending machine and got a couple of cokes. Now, there are moments in Japan when I have no choice but to just accept weird things and think to myself "Ok, you can't explain it, but I guess that's just how it is over here... don't challenge, accept"... Yesterday's vending machine experience was one such moment. Look at the picture on the right...
Look at the two cokes. The one above is 500ml, and the one below it is 350ml. Now look at the prices: 100 yen for 500ml, and 120 yen for 350ml!! Um... I was never very good at maths, but still... even I can see that somethings a little whacky here... "Don't challenge, accept".
I'm not complaining, that's for sure! haha

A Weekend of Baseball and Sore Legs

Last week some of my former students (now high school seniors) invited me to their baseball game at the weekend. Of course I was keen to go and cheer them on. I had former students in BOTH teams, and students from BOTH teams had invited me, so I wasn't sure which team to support, but nonetheless I was keen to go and watch the game. They told me it started at 9am at Miyazu Ballpark. The only problem was that Miyazu Ballpark is perhaps one of the trickiest places for me to get to! "Why? Isn't Miyazu easy enough to get to?" you ask. Well, yes, Miyazu is easy to get to, but the ballpark is outside of the city, up in the mountains. To get there I have to ride for about ten minutes out of the city, and then turn off the main road onto a tiny winding mountain road, and power-pedal up the winding slope to the top... but the worst part comes last: the TUNNEL! The road to the ballpark is narrow. It is no wider than a single lane would be back home, but add to that the fact that it winds through the forest and has plants spilling over onto the road making it even narrower in parts. It's quiet and shady; earthy and humid. Because of the angle of the road, and the exhausting effort it takes to keep peddling, it's a slow and tiring trip. But you know you're almost there when you reach the tunnel, and for me, the tunnel is the worst part. It's known as the "Old Kunda Tunnel" because it used to be the only tunnel connecting Miyazu with Kunda village on the other side of the mountains. It was built in 1886 and is now registered as a "National Treasure of Cultural Significance". However, a new road and a new tunnel were made in the 1980s. I looked up the measurements of the old tunnel online, and apparently it's 126 metres long and 4.6 metres wide... but I think this measurement is taken at it's widest point (about half way up the walls (it's almost circular in shape). I think the actual road is more like 3 metres wide. It's dark and made of stone. If you drive through it in a car, it's not too bad if you don't suffer from a fear of enclosed spaces, but if you go through on a bicycle... it seems never-ending and it's so dark. You can see the light at the END of the tunnel, but once you are inside, that's ALL you can see. It's BLACK. If a car were to come through the tunnel there wouldn't be much room to pull over to one side. When a car DOES go through, the sound echoes and is almost deafening. On a dark misty day, it's even worse. But there is no option, if you want to go to the ballpark, you have to go through the tunnel. So that's what I did at about 8:50am on Saturday morning. I had taken the train from Amino to Iwataki, hopped on my bicycle at Iwataki and biked for almost an hour to the Old Kunda Tunnel. I could hear the teams practising in the park, so I parked my bike and headed up into the stands. That was when I realised....
There were indeed many baseball teams gathered for a tournament of some kind, but they weren't high school teams, they were junior high teams!! I found that I had unknowingly walked into the Hashidate stand (my former junior high) and just as I noticed, the parents did too, and they excitedly greeted me, at which point the students overheard and came running over to say hi. It wasn't the game I had intended to watch, but it was one I was happy to watch nonetheless. Hashidate vs Ine. Hashidate won. I was impressed with how much the boys had grown.
It also dawned on me that I had made a HUGE mistake. The high school game that I had been invited to wasn't today, it was TOMORROW! SUNDAY!! Bugger!!!! After having got up at the crack of dawn to catch the train! After having ridden my bike from Iwataki to Miyazu! After all that peddling up the mountain road!! After the tunnel!!! My leg muscles were sore.
After the game ended, I biked back down the mountain, this time at high speed since it was downhill. I parked my bike and Miyazu Station and caught the train to Nodagawa where I met up with Liz and we had lunch with Marianne.
The next morning was take 2!! Again, I took the train, rode my bike, conquered the mountain, and approached the tunnel. The weather was bad though. It was overcast, cold and very faintly raining on and off. Up by the tunnel it was misty. I had just started to enter the dark abyss when I heard a car approaching from behind. I pulled back out of the tunnel and waited a few seconds for the car to go past. Once the car had passed I again headed into the darkness, but the car in front hadn't gone all the way through yet, and not only did it block the faint light at the end of the tunnel, the echo of the engine was deafening. I again pulled back and waited another few seconds before making my third attempt. I won't lie... it's scary and I'm not ashamed to admit it. I pedalled hard core, hoping that another car wouldn't come while I was still in the tunnel. I couldn't see anything around me, just the faint light at the far end. In the damp weather I could smell the 123 years of history... After what felt like an AGE but was only 126 metres later, I reached the end and was back out in the misty cool and rain. Almost as soon as I breathed a sigh relief, the clouds parted and the sun came out. I again parked my bike and made my way to the stands. Several boys greeted me, some casually with a wave and a smile, some formally removing their caps and bowing while barking "OHAIYOZAIMAS!" (baseball speak for good morning)in militaristic fashion. It felt good to step back into my old life for a moment, as it were. Once I sat down at the stands, the boys practising on the pitch below noticed me and when a couple of them removed their hats shouted "OHAIYOZAIMAS" at me, a quartre of the team followed suit (obviously thinking I was someone worthy of such respect, but really not knowing who I was...haha) removing their hats, bowing deeply and shouting "OHAIYOZAIMAS!"
Eventually the game began and parents started arriving. Many of them knew who I was and greeted me warmly. Some of the parents had known me for almost five years, so it was great to catch up with them.
After the game was over, I chatted with some more parents and finally the boys came out and some of them came over and chatted with me. It was great fun to talk to them again after so long.
Then the rain came again and the temperature dropped suddenly. It was cold. I was cold.
The boys had to go and have team-talk meetings so I hopped on my bike and headed back to Iwataki.
The bikeride was wet, but pretty. I biked along the Aso Sea toward Iwataki. Looking across the sea towards Iwataki, the clouds haning over the mountains looked ominous. Then I turned inland and rode through the reflective and newly planted rice fields in Suzu all the way to the station.
The single track at Iwataki-guchi Station. I waited here for 40 minutes for the next train. It dawned on me yet again the difference in lifestyle between Osaka and Iwataki.

When I went to bed last night my legs were so sore!! That bloody mountain road!!!!! My stupid gearless bike!! Oh well, I suppose it's good exercise. I hope their next game is somewhere less remote. haha

My hot date with a kiln

The other day I had one of those "only in Japan" moments.
I was invited to go with a bunch of friends to a potters house in Kaya and help keep his traditional kiln stoked and burning all night. It turned out to be a great night. Actually, the potter turned out to be none other than my friend Mashimo!! Mashimo and I have been friends for about four and a half years now, but I hadn't seen him in about a year, so he got a huge surprise to see me turn up that night. He was stoked, and more or less ignored everyone else for a good while as we chatted and caught up. A year is a long time, but thankfully not much changes around these parts.
Anyway, cutting a long story short, Mashimo is a recognised traditional potter. He creates beautiful pieces. One of his special weapons is his traditional wood kiln. He built it himself out of bricks and mud. The pottery sits in the back, and the fire burns in the front. It has to burn non-stop for about three days. That might sound straight forward, but that means someone needs to keep that thing stoked and burning all night long! Mashimo can't do that himself day and night for three days running, so he has friends come and help him do shifts. Our shift was Thursday night. We arrived at about 6pm or so, and ended our shift at about 8:30am on Friday morning.
It was a cold night, and we were in a shed with no walls, but we had the kiln burning steadily at 300~400 degrees (it would reach a temp of 1240 degrees Celsius over the next couple of days) and we had a BBQ burning, too. We sat around cooking fish, squid, meat, intestines and other good hearty Japanese BBQ food. It was great fun. We of course had plenty of beers and a couple of big bottles of Japanese sake. One of my friends there that night works for a well known sake brewery, so he brought along a good bottle for us to share. Another friend is a newspaper reporter, so he took lots of photos and notes, another is a silk weaver, so he brought... a bunch of stuff completely unrelated to silk, but it was all wrapped in a beautiful silk furoshiki... haha... and then there was me, two potters and the boss of the newspaper office. It was a funny mix of people, but we had such a great time. At about 11pm, one of the potters went home, and then at about 12am, the newspaper boss went home, then at about 2am Mashimo went to bed, then that left us four young guys. Toru (the silk weaver) fell asleep. At about 4am Yukimachi (Sake maker) went to sleep, leaving just me (gaijin) and Koyama (journalist) to cover the rest of the shift.
Throughout the course of the night, we chatted about all sorts of stuff, ranging from local gossip to the science behind how a kiln works (thank god I somehow knew the Japanese words for oxidation and reduction or else I wouldn't have been able to follow that conversation), to local myth and legend, to cross-cultural comparisons of Heaven, Hell and judgement (deep!), angels and demons, rugby tactics, South Pacific cultures, the ins and outs of rice cultivation, politics, and so much more! It was stupid and fantastic.
At this point I feel I should point out that Mashimo's place (where we were) is on the very edge of town... as in, it's pretty much in the mountains with no houses nearby. Just forest and rice paddies. Through the night we heard deer screeching in the forest, were constantly surrounded by all manner of bugs, and even had a mouse and a frog come visit us in the shed. I lost count of the number of moths that kamikaze dived into the red hot coals of our BBQ... so sad... so poetic.

Anyway, I could write pages about all the fun we had that night, but I can't really be bothered doing so, so here are some pictures. Suffice it to say, Friday was a complete write-off for me.

Mashimo checks on the fire, while we sit around and congratulate ourselves on cooking the best darned intestines EVER!

Yukimachi and the kiln. Actually the mud around the kiln gets really hot too. The Japanese say you have to cook the kiln first before the pottery will cook.

Dawn starting to break

The kiln shed, our home for the night.

In the morning, Mashimo got up and came out to check on the kiln at about 6am. He told Koyama and me to go take a refresh break. Koyama took a snooze inside, I tried to do the same, but strangely couldn't, so went and sat out by the pond round the back of the house. It was still early morning, but the koi carp were swimming around, the frogs were croaking, the birds were singing and the sun was trying to stream in... it was really serene. I swear it's moments like these that are like gold. I LOVE the countryside! I took a video to try to capture the sounds of the morning, but of course it didn't really work. here it is:


Actually, Liz and I own a few pieces of Mashimo pottery, so it's nice to have been a part of the very labour-intensive process that creates them. Mashimo says that the wood kiln creates a much more beautiful effect on the clay than electric kilns because of the burning wood. He says that it gives it a sort of a natural glaze or something. I think it's true, too, but not many people these days use the traditional wood kilns for two reasons: first they are so hugely labour intensive, and secondly you need a massive amount of wood to keep it burning for three or four days! But still, what an experience it was. I love it here.

Funamushi and missionaries

Today was supposed to be a hot sunny day.
It isn't.
I don't know what's up with the weather this year, but May hasn't been nearly as warm as it should have been.
Anyway, today I went for a walk. I started by walking along the beach and then climbing over the rocks to another beach. It wasn't sunny like it was supposed to be, but still it was fun being out and about... but it was on the rocks that I encountered the funamushi. I'm pretty sure we don't have funamushi in New Zealand, or at least if we do I've never seen one before and thus don't know what they are called in English. However, I CAN tell you that they are my most hated bug. There aren't many bugs that I hate. Pretty much only cockroaches and funamushi, and of those two, it's funamushi that I hate the most. They are truly DISGUSTING!!
There were loads of funamushi skuttling around on the rocks today. They sit there until you get near them and then they skuttle... they are speedy little buggers! And the big ones make a sound when they run... yuck!
I tried to film a few to show you what they are. Maybe you will know the English name for them, if so, let me know. My dictionary said they are "sea slaters" but I have never heard of them before. The little ones are about a centimeter in length, but the big ones two or three inches long!

So anyway, after the beach, I walked along the river and then down the winding narrow streets back to Liz's place. Just before I reached the house, I noticed something I had never noticed before. It was an unimposing stone slab. It had a bunch of Chinese characters written in a vertical line down the middle. They read: "This marks the birthplace of Urashima Taro". I was surprised! For those who don't know, Urashima Taro is a famous Japanese mythological character. I won't bore you with the story right now, but lots of people seem to think that he really existed a long long time ago. Many places in Japan claim to be his birthplace, or hometown or whatever, and there are a few such places here in Tango. There are a number of shrines around the peninsular named after him, and a number of statues of him all over the place, but I had never heard that he was born in Asamogawa before. Not just in Asamogawa, but just round the corner from Liz's place! haha. So I took a photo of the stone:
and then right next to it was... none other than... a sign telling people the Bible calls for them to seek forgiveness for their sins!! Go figure, out here in rural Japan... at the supposed birthplace of a Japanese legend: Christian propaganda. It's kind of imposing, with the word for "sin" in big bold yellow print:
Fingers crossed the weather will improve soon...

Where Have All the Face Masks Gone?

The current climate in Japan could be described by one word: hysteria. Well, it could be better described by four words: Uneducated and unwarranted hysteria.
As you probably know, the H1N1 virus is spreading round the world. First they called it swine flu but then when they realized it wasn’t swine flu they started referring to it as H1N1, which makes it sound something like a robot off starwars or something, but that’s ok. I used to be a fan of R2D2 back in the day. He would whistle and click. Sometimes when he got excited or stressed he would spin around. He really was quite funny. But unlike R2D2, H1N1 is no laughing matter.

People have died. Not many, but people have died. However, what Japan seems to be ignoring is the fact that the people who died would probably have died if they had caught the normal seasonal flu! They were extreme cases. Of course, it’s a horrible thing and I feel very sorry for their friends and families, but the rest of us need to look at this in perspective, which I feel most of the world is doing.
But not Japan.
Japan has gone mental.
If you were to listen to the Japanese media you would think that the end of the world is nigh; That this new strain of H1N1 will not only kill you, but everyone else in the country! It is really ridiculous. But don’t blame the everyday Japanese people. It's not their fault that the media is NOT giving an informed or balanced report. Whenever scientists ARE interviewed on air and DO tell reporters that there is nothing out of the ordinary to fear, that this new strain of influenza is actually milder than the usual seasonal influenza, they are then immediately counterattacked by someone bent on causing mass panic who says that people have died! MY GOD people have DIED!! You’re next!!! Protect yourself! (slight exaggeration, but that’s pretty much the gist of it…) and the voice of sanity (the scientist) is never invited back again.

Japan loves any excuse to don a facemask. They LOVE facemasks! Don’t you?
Anyway, now that everyone has been lead to believe that they will die without one, sales have sky-rocketed and there are next to none left in stores.
Schools have been closed.
Concerts cancelled
Shops and restaurants are reporting huge drops in customer numbers.
Many business are simply opting to stay closed for now, under the suggestion of local government, who don’t want to FORCE people to close businesses, but instead just suggested that it might be a good thing to do voluntarily.
People on the street talk about how frightening this new influenza virus is. Do they know that they should be more afraid of the flu that they get every year? Do they realize that if they tracked the infection rate of the normal flu, and counted how many people had contracted that and how many people had died from that each year, that the numbers would be significantly higher?
Don’t even get me started on how terrified people become if you should so much as cough in public!! ESPECIALLY since everyone thinks I’m American, and they think all Americans must have this new virus.

Anyway, I should stop here. I just needed to rant. I really love Japan and I love my friends here and am a happy person, it’s just that Japan can also be frustrating at times (as can any country), and this is one such instance.
If only Japanese people were taught to question the facts and make decisions of their own. If only they would go online and look at foreign news coverage of the H1N1 virus, if they would go onto medical websites and study the nature of the virus, see how dangerous it is (or isn’t) do a comparison between it and the normal seasonal flu…do SOME kind of check before joining the panic wagon, then maybe they wouldn’t be living in such fear now.

Sorry if this sounds unnecessarily negative, but it is frustrating to see my friends and students getting so nervous about this. One boy felt the need to hug me and beg me not to go back to Osaka (where there are a number of cases of the virus). Unfortunately now there has been one case of an elementary school boy contracting the virus in Kyoto city. This is supposedly the first case in Kyoto prefecture, but the boy in question hadn’t left the city at all, which leads me to believe that he must have caught it from someone else, right? So it was probably in Kyoto city all along. But now that it’s confirmed to be in Kyoto I’m sure people here will get even MORE frightened.

What a shame there are no more face masks in stores.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to downplay the virus, nor am I unaware of the possibility of it mutating into something more serious, but I just feel that media scare tactics are wrong and unfair.