Teachers' Trip Take 2 - Travelling to Aizu

A trip to Aizu, Fukushima Prefecture ( 会津 福島県 ) towards the north of the main island.

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.

BLANK Of The Day 5

English clues I was giving for something that was on the school lunch menu from this month.

"It's from France"
Answers...spaghetti, sliced bread, bibinba, yaki soba

"Chocolate Bread"
Only answer...choco bread...which isn't on the menu and never has been as far as I can remember. When I told them answer is what they call "cocoapan" cocoa bread, NONE of the students knew that cocoa had anything to do with chocolate...the bread is brown and tastes of chocolate and there is also a chocolate drink in Japan called cocoa.

I will defend Japan in saying that this BLANK could probably only happen in this particular BLANKy class.

Pride Comes Before a Fail

Well, they say pride comes before a fall, but I'm going to use the new "fail" slang that seems to have developed without informing me since I've been here as "pride comes before a fail" adds an extra air of embarrassment, which is fully appropriate for the amount of egg on my face after three recent events. Indeed, bad luck has come in a lovely set of three, as if the God of Japan has read my blog, noted everything that I have boasted about and has decided to teach me a big fat three tiered lesson.

Firstly, I told you how wonderful I am at riding a bike now and how I glide along around the rice fields of Ita-where, with farmers gazing at my grace, speed and control. Cue me cycling into a bollard the other day, trapping my foot between it and a pedal whilst the other foot was still pushing forward on the other pedal (obviously over confident in his counterpart's foot's cycling ability), creating a space between said pedal and said bollard which was far too small for a foot, yet had a foot in it. This happened at a light, embarrassingly holding up the car that was about to turn the corner into the street, which decided to turn anyway, just in time to see me yelp and yell a couple of awful profanities and for the child in the car, who I teach, as the lovely lady of fate would have it, to shout "Hello" out of the window (I was still mid-profanity at the time, so they did not get a response).

Secondly, I have boasted a little about Japanese fashion and having tried out a few bits, some succesfully, some unsuccessfully. Also, in conversation, and in my own head, I have been bigging myself up for saving enough money at the end of last month to go on a fashion splurge in Harajuku, and having made such wonderfully fashionable purchases, which all suit me, were good deals and fit well...perfection. Cut to me on Monday morning prancing around my flat, posing in my new clothes before packing them all for a three-day conference that I was heading off to at about 10 O clock. Such pretty clothes, which would work so well for post-conference drinking and karaoking with other teachery friends. Pit I forgot about the actual MEETINGS that would take up 70% of my time there and forgot to pack a change of shirt for three days...H+M stop off necessary. Total fail.

Thirdly, I do believe that I boasted to a ridiculous extent about my amazing omiyage skills and how all of my presents are superb quality and all go down so well. I sent three sets of Christmas crackers to Japan from the UK at Christmastime, by means of omiyage for three of my primary school. I also sent a card with a quick explanation that they are a British tradition and not common in most parts of the world, even the rest of the English-speaking world or Europe and that if they didn't know what to do, they should ask the fourth grade teachers as we made some in December's fourth grade class in every school. I didn't get many thank yous at all, for what I thought was a very original and fun present. In reality, it played our rather differently. I saw a few teachers with them still on their desk at one school in mid-Feb when I first went back to my primary school shifts, and a whole unopened box (out of one that I sent) at another. At the third school, I got a couple of thank yous and didn't see any lying around, so I reckoned that they had gone down better there. This was until, the rather bolshy (for a Japanese person) librarian, who said "What was that cracker thing?" "Mine didn't make a sound." I couldn't believe it, I've never had a broken one ever. It turns out that she had no idea what it was or how to use it as no-one had shown her the card and the fourth grade teacher hadn't said anything, so she tried to pull in ON HER OWN....and...wait for it.... OVER HER HEAD (I didn't know whether to laugh or cryat that image). We then did a quick survey of some other teachers in the room, to find that two still had their sitting at home because they didn't know what to do and one thought that it was supposed to be eaten!! BIG FAT CRACKER FAIL.

BLANK Of The Day 4

I was in a class the other day and the teacher was doing a quiz where she held up pictures of a typical breakfast from various countries to see if the students could guess which country it came from (answers ranged from names of towns to continents to other islands of Japan, so the answer was obviously no, but it was worth a try). She told about the quiz on the way into the classroom and proudly told me that she had an English breakfast photo in honour of me. I grinned and semi-bowed (I was over the moon that she had remembered I wasn't American to be honest!). We get to the second question, which was a picture of beef stew and cupcakes...I was thinking where the hell do they eat that for breakfast and did my best shock face, in tune with the students (I'm getting pretty good at the Japanese reactions now) and peered over the shoulder the teacher to read the answer...England! This was one of those "I had to laugh or else I would cry" moments. Cupcakes and beef stew. BEEF STEW AND CUPCAKES?? Where did she get that information?? To make it worse, I had been sitting opposite her in the staffroom for half of the morning...wouldn't asking the English person about the English breakfast, or even just checking quickly have made sense? She was so proud of her quiz though that I just didn't have the heart to say that it was complete rubbish and just span some line about everyone in England eating something different for breakfast. For instance, I eat toast (lack of shock faces there). I suppose one way to get them interested in foreign countries is just to lie about them. I now have 20-odd students who thinks an English breakfast is beef stew and cupcakes, when, in reality, I can't think of a combination that is less accurate...I hope they never go there and order one!!

Random Event Of The Day 5

I was shopping (or doing very good just-looking-not-even-touching due to lack of funds) in a Japanese fashion shop called Comme Ca in Shinjuku the weekend before last. Comme Ca is pretty cool and funky...bit top-shoppy but not quite as out there. Anyway, they had a song on loop where the first couple of bars featured a voice over with somebody shouting "Hello" in English and I actually reacted to it and looked over my shoulder THREE TIMES as if someoby was talking to me!! It sounded so realistic and is testament to the fact that my new call sign is simply "Hello" as most of my kids forget my name so don't ever make it past "hello" and for half of the rest of Japan, that's about as far as in English as they can get...very embarrassing and a true sign of what my life has become!!

BLANK Of The Day 3

My turn to BLANK this time, although I think it's fair enough. There is a new K-Pop group (Korean Pop) out called Kara...I say new in that they are new to me as I don't follow K-Pop because I like good music, but I think they might actually have been around for a while. They are a girl group who are a big hit in Japan and I think are currently here for promotion or a tour or just in an attempt to take over my TV. Anyway, K-Pop is cooler than J-Pop so I've given in a little bit and I was loving one Kara song because I thought it said "choppy choppy choppy now" in it, which I thought must mean something in Korean, but it just gave me funny images of them all smiling (it's a very happy song as most J and K-Pop is) and chopping onions or something. However, I've just learnt that they are actually supposed to be singing English there and it's "jumping, jumping, jumping up!!" Youtube it and see what you think!

Random Event Of The Day 4

Actually stopped and stared at some dog poo on the pavement yesterday...I may have pointed as well, because I honestly believe that is the FIRST time I have seen some in 18 months in the country! Either Japanese people are incredibly responsible or their dogs are very very well trained...or perhaps, like Queen Elizabeth, they just don't poo.

Random Event Of The Day 3

Saw an old woman out of the corner of my eye who lives across the road bending down the other day in an almost right angled position under this really low window ledge and thought "What on Earth is she just standing there bent down like that for?" She proceeded to walk forward a bit from under the ledge, still in the same position, and then I realised that she is just a naturally right-angle-shaped person...Remind me not to fall asleep in the aforementioned semi-wedge kotatsu position again!!

Fuss of The Day 3

For once, this was a fuss I fully took part in and supported whole heartedly. We had ramen (thin noodles in a soup) for school dinner yesterday...we've never had them before and they were a NIGHTMARE to serve...it took me and two other teachers around the big pot, one for holding the bowl, one for scooping the noodles with one of those sort of wannabe-ladel half spoon half fork things and me with a normal ladel scooping soup up. Serving it took twice the time it normally did and towards the end there were simply no actual noodles left and just soup...everyone was pretty excited about getting ramen for the first time, so serving some people ramen without any ramen in it would have been a bit of a slap in the face...cue wannabe oversized ladel being used to scoop a few floater noodles out of some small bowls and into the ones that had only soup. One guy still wound up with a bowl of ramen that didn't even have one noodle in it!! If today is anything to go by, that could be a joke that lasts the rest of this year!

Teachers' Trip Take 1 - Travelling to Matsushima

The way Japanese people travel is truly astounding...sometimes a colleauge goes away for a couple of days or so and I get an omiyage from somewhere ridiculously far away like Italy on my desk. On enquiring what they could possibly have been doing in Italy for only FOUR DAYS or so, considering almost a whole day of it would be the plane journey alone, I get an account of the 18 or so cities that were visited, the pizza and spaghetti that was eaten and the one hundred and twenty five thousand photos that were taken, all featuring said teacher doing a peace sign in front of various sights and not smiling...probably didn't have time to smile.

So, with these ridiculously tightly organised and regimented travel stories in mind that I rather nervously accepted an invite to go on a trip with my teachers to Matsuthshima (松島）(left) in Miyagi prefecture　（宮城県, a city towards the North of Japan's main island (the one that Gunma is also on, in the middle somewhere), Honshu. It's just next to the city Sendai. The main aim of the trip is to bond (mainly achieved through drinking yourself silly) whilst seeing ever single thing that Miyagi has to offer, including many things on the way, soak in an onsen, eat a lovely dinner and take a million photos, all in the space of just over 24 hours. That was a CHARRENJI if ever there was one, especially as this story actually comes from over a year ago, when I still couldn't speak much Japanese. Departure was at ridiculous O'clock, on a coach from the school carpark. I was handed an enormous bag of snacks for the ride, which more than slightly scared me as to how long this coach trip could be...just how many dried squid things can one need for one journey???

Somehow, in spite of it being about 5am and in spite of us all arriving in time, within about 5 minutes of setting off, we were 'running late.' By this time, we were also already a bag of squid snacks down each (not me) and halfway through a can of alcoholic beverage (I was further due to nerves). I sat with the young teachers at the back of the bus, like the naughty kids, and we played drinking games and I chatted to many of them for the first time and it was really fun...the only annoying bit was the 15 minute interruptions to pile off of the coach, go to toilet, take a photo in front of a random tourist site and buy some omiyage that that region is 'famous' for...everywhere is supposedly famous for something in Japan, even Ita-where is famous for cucumbers, in spite of them just being normal cucumber and Ita-where not being famous full stop. Lunch was in a place that couldn't have been famous for anything more unfortunate...TONGUE. I was tucking into my tongue curry (the restaurant only did tongue dishes and it was the least tongue-y looking picture on the menu) downing more alcohol, cameras flashing all around me...I definitely felt like I was in Japan!

We continued rushing, because we were 'late' for the next couple of hours, with rushed pit stops and many sights, so remote that people literally couldn't tell me what they were. It was like a race for the omiyage shop and then back on to the coach. In the end, we arrived at the onsen hotel late-afternoon and it turned out that what were late was to get into the onsen! An onsen that is attached to our hotel and is open all night anyway!!

It's funny how sitting naked in a hot bath in the freezing cold knocking naked knees with your naked 40-year-old English teacher can sober you up. Let's say no more about onsenning with teachers.

left: one of the unknown sights

We then enkaied in a very drunken fashion (pretty enkai food to the right) and got up at the crack of dawn the next day to begin the same journey back down the motorway, but finding an incredible amount of unstopped at omiyage shops along the way. We went to a massive fish market that was really interesting, if a little scary, especially on a hangover, (amazing sushi though, BIG step up from tongue curry) a shrine (or two, or three), a history museum and went on a lovely boat trip around one of the most famous sights in Japan. It's loads of sort of mini cliffs and islands off the coast. It was very beautiful, but most of the teachers had already been, so spent the trip throwing leftover crisps from the giant snack bag to seagulls and queueing to buy omiyage at the boat's shop...I kid you not.

All in all, a fun, if a little stressful experience. Usually, a single guy going on holiday, coming back to say there was nudity and tongue would be a big success...slightly different here though! Here are some more photos....I have about 80 photos from 24 hours and I imagine that most of my teachers had at least three times that amount.

My Japanese teacher is off to Spain in a couple of weeks and is officially visiting more that one town per day, changing hotels every single night for 9 days...I feel the photo session could well be a long one!!

Fuss Of The Day 2

Last week we had a Japanese Paralympian come to give us a speech at school (as you do). This preparation fuss was immense with letters and announcements being given out on a seemingly 5 minute basis informing us of important things, such as changing the time we would get the second grade students to take their chairs down from 1.25 to 1.20. This ongoing fuss for such an important person seemes slightly hypocritical considering that at least half the students and even more of the teachers FELL ASLEEP during the speech (literally). The actual fuss of the day was surely the only detail that we managed to overlook...what to put the water in that was going to be put out for her on the stage in case she needed a drink mid-speech. Lack of bottles, jugs and time to go to a shop for a bottle (not sure why) led to her decanter being a vase, not a particularly cryptic one either as it had cartoon flowers all over it...even more planning needed next time!

Random Event of The Day 2

I am currently watching a competition on TV about who can do the best impression of trains (including the announcements) and it is actually really making me laughing out loud...not so much AT but WITH. Weirdly enough I was actually DOING impressions of train announcements with one of my teachers today....been in Japan too long much???

BLANK Of The Day 2

"I'll cook you some traditional Japanese food...like croquet potatoes!" Clue's in the name mate.

Me and My Kotatsu

"What is a Kotatsu?" I hear you cry! A kotatsu, not to be confused with the famous hot spring Kusatsu or the the delish pork cutlet and rice dish katsudon (not that I'm speaking from experience of course), is a short heated Japanese table that is used in Japan to keep warm during the winter. The Japanese winter is so so cold. Actually, I take that back...where I live, it's fairly similar to London I imagine, but it just feels ten times colder because the heating is so poor that you might as well be standing outside the whole time. To combat this, rather than installing good heating, the Japanese have come up with this cunning way to convince us all that we are warm. My normal table actually turns into a kotatsu in the winter. That makes it sounds like it's an automatic change, which, believe me, it very very much isn't. The table is heated electrically underneath and the top comes off so that you can put a thick blanket over it and let it fall over your legs, keeping the heat in. It can then be placed back on top of the blanket so that your table can still be used as a table. Does that make any sense at all? Maybe a photo would help, so here is a picture of my kotatsu:

It is very comforting to sit under it, but I know I'd rather be in an actual WARM ROOM and therefore not need the tiny bit of boiling hot space UNDER A TABLE that I am crammed into.

Advantages of kotatsus:

1. They keep your feet nice and toasty.

2. They allow you to use your funky floor chair if you are as cool enough to own one (as I clearly am). I love my floor chair.

Disadvantages of kotatsus:

1. It gives you only 2 square feet of warmth, which is just a few cm off of the ground.

2. It means that the only warm parts of your house are under a table and the toilet seat, with the fridge coming in third place...not the most practical of locations.

3. It makes you try to wedge yourself into the aforementioned 2 square feet of impractically located space, which even a contortionist couldn't do and then when you get the maximum amount of your body under it, you realise that it's so hot under there that you have to withdraw a bit every minute or so and sit in a sort of hovering semi-wedge.

4. You fall asleep in said wedge or semi-wedge position and wake up with boiling legs, a freezing head and an aching back.

5. It's name leads you to tell people that you ate a table for dinner or feel asleep under your pork cutlet and rice (may or may not have happened to me).

However, in spite of myself, I do spend most of my time at home wedged or semi-wedged under the thing and that is indeed, where I am now, writing to you. It's so very impractical, but when everywhere is so cold, it really is a God-send...me and my kotatsu have a true love-hate relationship. Floor chair is all love, as is katsudon and Kusatsu.

BLANK Of The Day 1

I'll let them off because they are only about 6 years old, but my little ones today couldn't believe that I use Japanese money when I'm in Japan...quite what they thought I did I'm not sure, or quite why it provided SO much shock. "Does that mean you have Japanese money?" Yes. "You don't use American money?"...nuff said