The first teachers' trip article about the journey to Matsushima is based on a time when I couldn't speak Japanese and basically had no idea what was going on at the best of times, let alone being in a bus at 7am with a can of beer in my hand heading to a tongue restaurant. The second time around and I had a lot more experience of Japan and knew what I was letting myself in for...I'm not sure if that makes the fact that last October I once again found myself in a bus at 7am with a can of beer in my hand, heading to a German-style restaurant more stupid of me or less stupid of me, but, for better or worse, I was there.
We set off at ridiculous Oclock yet again, with a huge bag of snacks and many an alcoholic beverage. All was the same as last year...no shocks...good so far. Then, at about 10 past ridiculous, an on-bus karaoke machine was whipped out and the mic started making it's way around everyone. Not the best at such an early time, when everyone is your colleague, and you don't know them that well, you are stuck on a bus and they are all drunk in typical Japanese - smell alcohol - drunk style and you are just half asleep still. Matters were only made worse by the fact that the karaoke machine delightfully gave each person a score on a big screen so that everyone could see just how bad you were. I managed to screech out something by Queen and scrape 50% (probably most of those points scored for pronunciation rather than tune - I'm sure Freddie turned in his grave) and quickly began downing my way through as many cans as possible.
Arriving EARLY at the German restaurant (about 11!) which is ridiculous as we were supposedly late before we'd set off again and if there is a record for how many times one bus can stop for toilet breaks in 4 hours we must have weeed all over it(is that how you spell weeed?? That can't be right, but I can't be weeed to check). Anyway, we were in a rather strange set of faux-German-Alpine type buildings, about two feet from a massive motorway. The restaurant itself was FULL of random decorations with bad German on them and strange "German-style" omiyage...God knows what Japanese people must think Germany is like with shops like that...nearly everything had a picture of a beer on it! Inexplicably, but fairly predictably, the food was all Japanese, but it was very nice. All the beer was German and we had about 6 jugs of a really dark bitter beer on our table...not my fave, but, still trying to blank out my rendition of All You Need I Love (I was made to do a second karaoke following loo break 18 or so - it's a LONG song). CLEARLY nobody liked the beer much, but one particularly drunken teacher ordered three extra jugs for the table without telling everyone, meaning we had to sit there for ages and force it down. Lucky we were running early. Then, we were given AN HOUR to kill in the horrible beer/sausage/Berlin Wall/Hitler omiyage shop, a car park, and a "famous" shop that sold glass sculptures. I spent about 3 minutes in there...all very pretty, but they were 3 minutes of fear of breaking something, so I went and sat outside in the car park with most of the teachers. I thought it was fairly obvious that we didn't need any more time there, but, after an hour of sitting, we entered a discussion as to whether to do the thing that was next on the schedule, a museum about a famous scientist, or go to a "famous" cake shop for omiyage. I wasn't particularly bothered so let the long decision process unfold before me, fairly unsurprisingly, omiyage triumphed.
It was, however, upon pulling out of the vaguely Alpine layby that I realised that the museum was LITERALLY in the same carpark and that the only reason we had all been wasting time outside the glass sculpture shop was because we were officially ahead of the schedule AND, the only reason that we had chosen that J-Alpine village was because it was next to the museum. Still, a fairly average cake shop, FULL to the brim with pushy Japanese shoppers...never get in the way of a little old J-biddy and her omiyage purchase, meant that we skipped the museum altogether.
Drunk as anything, the next part of the plan was to go to a sake brewery...Once in Aizu, that's what you do, because Aizu is famous for sake. I can't remember much of it, but I did have the BIGGEST bottle of sake to show for it the next day which I had bought for my Dad as a Christmas present in the omiyage shop (turning Japanese) without any consideration for how I would get it home to England!
Arriving at the hotel, we all rushed for the onsen, which was truly the most beautiful I've been to since being in Japan. It was a perfect temperature, a few different baths, and totally surrounded by nature, overlooking a range of mountains. The only downside was that I was sitting next to my naked 50-something deputy head teacher whilst I was trying to relax in it. Then we enkaied...more karoke (this time plus stage, but plus much more alcohol, so I was slightly more willing). The following day I hung-overdly wore the wrong slipper or wrong shoe in the wrong maze of corridors and caused a bit of a teacher fuss, but apart from that, I managed to time onsen away from most of my teachers and actually enjoy without the threat of seeing a teacher's penis...sorry to be crude, I love the onsen and I don't mind the nakedness, but colleagues is just a step too far. After leaving the very posh hotel we went and made pottery cups, as you do...seems that I haven't developed a skill for that since the last time I tried it and cocked it up at the age of about 9 (I really am rubbish at everything) and wound up with a sort of half cup half bowl. I would blame not being able to understand the Japanese, but I know it would have been the same wherever I was. Anyway, it's a nice souvenir and was a good idea of the organisers, I think. We all had fun. The only problem was the wankered teacher from the day before (who kept buying the jugs of horrible beer) somehow still being drunk and constantly trying to make jokes at the instructor's expense...I think everyone liked him a little bit less after that trip, I know that I did.
Last stop was like a massive craft village thing, which had lots of pretty stuff. This one was famous for "eating soba with a long Japanese negi onion instead of with a chopstick"...I kid you not. Anywhere can be "famous" in Japan, I mean, surely a couple of restaurants just decided to start doing that for no reason other than to put it on a tourist information leaflet somewhere and to claim it was famous. Anyway...I still did it, I managed to restrain myself from buying an onion keyring as a souvenir of the experience though. There is a photo though. That is my proudest moment of the trip because it's so famous - I'd been waiting to do it for ages, it was like a pilgramage (note the sarcasm). Worst moment of the trip was coming LAST out of about 25 teachers in bingo on the way back home for the SECOND YEAR RUNNING...last year I won a tupperware and this year I won some of those paper masks you wear when you're ill. I'm sure everyone thinks I'm so stupid, because, not only do they read the numbers about 3 times each but they also flash up on a big screen...but, I'm not stupid, I'm just stupidly unlucky at things like bingo. I'll have the last laugh when I win the lottery. It's just that I don't want to win a game where the top prize is a beer out of the bus fridge that I could have just reached in and taken myself anyway.
Anyway, more successful that last year's that's for sure...more friendships built, more fun had, but most importantly, less tongue.
