Toya Day 42: Despicable Cuteness and the Ghosts of Kendo

Toya Nursery.

Just the very name evokes the apocalypse, doesn’t it? Well, perhaps not, but today was an exception to the rule of Toya Nursery anyway.

Arising to some further jam on toast, we headed for work and were surprised to find… organised activity?!?!?!? What was this witchcraft?

The children were practicing for a festival on Saturday – which will be jointly held with the Sakura Nursery and possibly the Sakuragaoka Nursery. It began with a despicably cute dance routine from the youngest children (which was to a sort of odd Wild West theme), followed by a despicably cute dance from the older girls in Beauty and the Beast style to a ballad using roses as props, followed by a rendition of Kira Kira Hikaru from the older boys (that’s Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to us in the West 😉 ) – me and Brendan singing the second verse in English, which I think we’re doing with Sakura Nursery on the day.

Even cuter than this!

Then, all of a sudden, we were told we’d be the backup singers to another song! The other song was ‘I met a Bear’ – I’d heard of it, but I didn’t know the lyrics to it (which are here if anyone’s interested: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/miscellaneouslyrics/childsongslyrics/thebearlyrics.html). It was a simple enough song to pick up, though – and dear god it’s so despicably cute when all the kids in the nursery sing at once!

Following that, we went to make sandcastles – always an enjoyable thing, even at 18! And, y’know, it’s pretty easy to impress Nursery kids when you can make them successfully – bonus!

After we’d finished at the Nursery, we headed for the Office to what can only be described as Christmas Day. Six parcels. Six. My desk literally looked like a post office. On the upside, I’m all ready for skiing now with salopettes and a jacket! I also got my copy of Super Dimension Fortress Macross – I hope it’s good! Erica said it was, and I have faith in her, so I’m looking forward to it.

This is Macross – it was the thirtieth anniversary a few weeks ago so it sparked my interest! Because Giant Robots are always cool 😀

We then had a surprise meeting with Hiromi-san and another lady who has a name which evades me 😉 We were discussing Wednesday’s Halloween Party and the preceding English After School Club. Long story short, I’m making curry diablo (I’m sure you can guess what that is!) and the kids are playing Bulldog a bit 😉 Although me and Brendan had to do a bit of role-playing to explain the concept of Bulldog – odd, since they were playing it in the Elementary School before!

In the evening, it was Kendo time. And tonight, it was only me and Matsubara-sensei. Taka-san is in Tokyo and Brendan has a slightly gammy foot, so it was literally a private lesson.

When we arrived, the lights were still on the Gymnasium. Then, suddenly, they deactivated and some piano music started playing! Then, some green-ish and red-ish stage lights came on – it was creepy! Inside were the first grade teacher and Hane-sensei, the sixth-grade teacher. They were practicing for the culture festival, and for the earlier part of the lesson we had some rather nice backing music 😀

This is a Japanese ghost. It’s also the best visual aid I can think of 😉

After further practicing the Men strike, Matsubara-sensei showed me something new – blocking! Both for overhead strikes and shoulder strikes. He said we’d practice this further next time, and we’d also learn the shoulder strike!

Upon coming home, the only thing left to do was play more Pokémon 😉 I’m in Castelia City now, so progress is being made!

Toya Day 41: The Jared Threshold

Today was it. The day where it all came to a head – the day that we surpassed the Jared Threshold. I’ll explain that concept in a bit.

It was actually a fairly uneventful day apart from one major event. I got up at around 11:00AM, and was waiting for Brendan to get up for… a while. I played some more Pokémon, I did some web browsing, and eventually I got bored and went to the Seicomart, having a sudden-onset craving for Jam on Toast 😉

Seriously, that stuff is the food of gods. I walked to the Seicomart heavily wrapped in both a hoodie and my ski jacket, as well as gloves and thermals, because of how cold and wet the weather was. It was very cold today! The rain was being temperamental, too, at one minute being very heavy, and at the next being very light. Not a fun day for walks, but it was worth it!

I arrived at the Seicomart, bought the obligatory Kara-age, and then bought cheap Seicomart bread, cheap Seicomart jam and cheap Seicomart butter. Oh, and a chocolate bar called a ‘Krunky’. Wich was odd.

Walking home hurriedly, I found that Brendan still wasn’t awake! By this time it was close to 2:00PM. Regardless, I made my Jam on Toast, and it was glorious! The perfect setting for our toaster is four minutes, and the butter is just soft enough to be easy to spread. The jam was a great flavour – not too sweet, fruity in flavour and pleasant in texture. It was fantastic 🙂

Just uploading the picture makes me want more!

Brendan awoke at roughly 2:30PM, with us having to be at the Mizu no Eki for 3:00PM. Thankfully, we made it on time to nothing else but our first Japanese lesson!

It had been so long coming and we were very glad to finally begin. We didn’t cover anything super-advanced – some basic grammar and sentence structure. But it represented a start, and Takaku obviously knows what she’s doing – we genuinely came away feeling that we’d learned.

Following that, nothing much happened for the rest of the day. We did cleaning and washing, we went to the Onsen, and I played some more Pokemon. Oh, and I had more jam on toast. I love jam on toast. It’s unhealthy how much I love jam on toast. Seriously, chefs of the world – make a dish combining fried chicken, curry and jam on toast and I’ll die happy. Fat too, but happy 🙂

Yes, I know it’s the same picture, but it’s too amazing to not talk about!

The Jared Threshold, as referred to by the title, is a concept which me and Brendan have kept coming back to since we first heard about the events of last year. Obviously, Adam stayed until the end with his amazing ‘let’s get up and cycle around the lake at 4:00AM’ work ethic, but Jared left exactly this many days in one year ago. The point he left is the Jared Threshold – and we’ve beaten it. Only the Adam Roy Threshold remains, and that one will be a while in coming. Also, while Adam will be remembered for his work ethic which neither of us can hope to match, we have to carve our own thing to be remembered by. Current considerations include fried chicken consumption, making the hottest curry in existence and doing a karaoke rendition of Zankoku na Tenshi no Teze:

Any other suggestions?

Toya Day 40: Of Ghosts, Volcanoes and Pokémon

 

So, Jeremy sent a text early in the morning and invited us to go to Toyako Onsen with him. However, early was about 9:00AM, and since we were both quite tired, we ignored it, thinking it was our boss or something 😉

 

At 11:00, however, he was still game for a trip to Onsen, so we agreed to meet up at 2:00PM just outside the 7-11.

 

Now, that seems fairly simple, yes? No, actually. We arrived at the Mizu no Eki for our bus at 1:29, not noticing that there was another bus at 1:27. It wasn’t the wrong bus, but it took the opposite route around the lake which essentially adds 30 minutes extra to the journey. It also dropped us off in the wrong part of Toyako Onsen.

 

Since it was a fairly muggy day, the midges were everywhere, and the part of Toyako Onsen where we’d been dropped off was swarming with them – there were practically clouds of the things! So we swiftly moved away from the lakeside and got behind the cover of some buildings!

 

Somewhat late, we met Jeremy at the 7-11, and we decided to go explore Toyako Onsen’s abandoned buildings on the edge of town.

 

In the year 2000, Mt. Usu erupted and caused the evacuation of Toyako Onsen. Noone died in the eruption, but significant damage was done in some areas – I touched on this earlier with old nursery and the old Highway, both of which were wrecked by the eruption. They, however, were over on the Abuta side of the volcano, so the Toyako Onsen side was new. Most had been demolished, but two buildings and parts of the Highway have been preserved as a monument to the eruption.

 

The first building was an old school – the damage to which was incredible. The windows were smashed, and there were holes in the roof where chunks of volcanic rock had come through. Things were torn and smashed, either as a result of the eruption or the preceding earthquakes. It was obviously beyond repair, and it was a testament to how destructive Mt. Usu can be.

While I’m sure a lot of my friends would like this to happen to Minsthorpe, it really is a testament to the destructive force of a volcano.

 

The second building was an old apartment block, which was in somewhat better condition than the school was in. You could see through the windows, and everything was perfectly preserved – the tatami floors, the doors, the kitchens – everything as it was twelve years ago. Obviously worse for wear after twelve years of neglect, but not too hard to imagine as a functioning living space.

 

Until we reached the other side.

 

We noticed doors and balconies effectively underneath the grass, just slightly protruding. This meant that the ground had been raised by at least three stories, which is pretty incredible. We’d been told before that areas of ground are forced upward, but it was hard to imagine it being picked up this far. It was quite creepy to think about – it looked like something from Life After People or something like that.

While they look in decent condition, this apartment block is a wreck. Many of the rooms are preserved quite well, however.

 

When we returned to Toyako Onsen, we began discussing Pokémon. Jeremy revealed that he always chose Charmander, and that he always AB’d to prevent evolution until very high levels. So, in other words, he was doing it wrong 😉 He also explained to us that there was an anime festival held in July in Toyako Onsen – the anime Gintama is apparently the inspiration for this, as his sword apparently says Toyako on it. I don’t know the story of Gintama, but it’s a pretty cool thing for the town, I guess! We also discussed the possibility of going as the original three starter Pokémon – because that would be awesome 😀

The anime festival happens because of this anime!

 

We then went for some strong Japanese coffee – genuinely, even with milk in, it was like drinking espresso coffee – I liked it, but Brendan wasn’t so fond! It’s interesting – one would expect American-style coffee (Read: Brown Water) to be prevalent in Japan, but it’s really quite far from that garbage coffee. They actually sell American Coffee as a separate item, and Jeremy – American himself – describes it as ‘disgusting’.

 

Going back to the bus terminal to check our bus times, it turned out that we still had an hour left – so we spent in the Onsen again! This was the fourth time in as many weeks that we’d been to Toyako Onsen. Interesting anecdote – the staff gave us 50% off because they’d seen us in the local magazine! It was a nice surprise – that’s what we get for literally being the only foreigners in a 15km radius!

 

Going home, on the latest possible bus, of course, I spent the rest of the evening playing Pokémon White 2 – and it’s a substantial improvement over Black and White 1 solely for the fact that you can get original Pokémon and not just mostly-awful Generation 5 ones. Indeed, I caught a Growlithe (which will eventually be Arcanine, my favourite Pokémon!) and an Elekid which will eventually be Electabuzz.  Later plans include a Lapras and a Braviary, too, and maybe even something like a Gyarados!

 

Toya Day 39: Yako Cooks Us Dinner…

Sakura Nursery again, and getting up was hard after another tiring week – it’s been very busy and we’ve been largely in the highly fatiguing Nurseries. That’s not to say they’re bad – it’s just that in a literal sense they require the most physical energy expenditure. So yes, tired.

Anyway, the lady from the Sakuragaoka Nursery was there for some reason – I’m not exactly sure why – as well as some people with Board of Education badges. They sat and watched as we did the routine exercises, and I still haven’t a clue why. Perplexing. What’s more, the Sakuragaoka lady kept correcting the exercise routine. My best guess is that she owns both Nurseries, and the people were there on an inspection, but I honestly have no way to be sure.

After that incident, it was time to go on the always-enjoyable Sakura walk. Today, we headed to a farm where we proceeded to collect conkers for the third time in the week! These being farmed ones, they were of a higher quality than the fully wild ones. They also became more spiky somehow! But the owner of the farm did give us some toffee, which was nice.

It strikes me that I haven’t actually uploaded a picture of what the Hokkaido countryside looks like yet – well, here it is! This photo is a little more advanced in the year than we are, and is taken on a rather idyllic day! The weather is generally cloudy, but My. Yotei doesn’t have much snow yet.

After lunch we headed back to the Sogo Centre, and we were disappointed to see that Aoba-san wasn’t there. That meant that we’d have to wait to plan our return from Wakkanai. However, we did get some ‘productive’ things done on  the Internet! Things like reading up on the Dalai Lama and watching the Gangnam Style video, both of which are useful in English teaching, I assure you!

Then we went home, and scrubbed the house to oblivion. It wasn’t filthy, but it wasn’t fit to cook in either, so the next hour was spent clearing our mess. It would have had to have been done anyway, though, and it’s nice to have a relatively clean house.

Yako-san then arrived to make us dinner, carrying with him a large bottle and some fresh soba noodles, which he had rolled and cut himself! We watched him and, despite my thoughts of him possibly setting the house on fire, the mean he made was actually really good! We had the soba in a soup of fish stock, soy sauce, mirin and sake. It looked quite simple to make – you mix the soup in one pot and the soba in the other, and then pour the soup onto the soba when serving. He also recommended a spice mix which tasted great on it!

Fresh soba. Soba noodles are made of buckwheat, and are made in a similar manner to pasta.

The evening after that was… uneventful. So, unless you’re big into videogames, this is going to bore you.

I got one of the six endings for 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors – a bad one! One which ended in the deaths of everyone… but an ending nonetheless! It was a very weird game, and I’m told that to fully get the story you have to see all of the endings anyway, so one down, five to go. Maybe it’ll go better for Junpei than it did this time. Hopefully. For him.

The name of that ending was the ‘Axe Ending’ which gives you some clue as to what it’s about.

Things didn’t go so well for these guys in the ending I lead them to…

Following that, I finally tried out Pokemon White 2. I chose Oshawott as my starter (Samurott, at least, looks cool, although I must admit I miss old Smugleaf). I also found out that you can get Elekid and, therefore, an Electabuzz ( 😀 ) in one of the early locations! It’s classic Pokemon so far, in all honesty – and it’s a formula that I love, so I’m perfectly happy with it! It also turns out that Trubbish is version-exclusive to Black 2, so I made the right choice buying White 2!

Toya Day 38: Heroes of Abuta

As is every Thursday, today was an Abuta day. And today, we’d be in yet another new Nursery – the Honcho Nursery. This is the second-to-last place we’ll work in, only the Junior High is left!

We were up, for a change, actually on time. Now, I don’t like being up on time because it means less sleep, but it meant that we weren’t rushing.

Erica drove us to Abuta, and she dropped us at the Honcho Nursery with due haste. After being quickly introduced, me and Brendan were split – I went with the five year olds, and he with the four year olds.

Honcho Nursery is actually pretty nice. Similar to Sakuragaoka, it’s pleasant and enjoyable but there’s still some sense of purpose and organisation (again, making it different to the Irie Gulag… err, Nursery). It’s big, but it’s not Irie big – falling somewhere between it and Sakuragaoka. It’s got friendly staff too, who do seem to care for the kids.

The inspiration for Irie Nursery. To be fair, it wasn’t *that* bad, but it was very, very regimented.

Anyway, the only activity of that morning would be going on a walk in Abuta town. We headed out, crossing the railway line and heading into the hills on the edge of town. At first, our quest was simple – find conkers like had been the quest in Toya Nursery. The problem was, most were already gone. When we went with Toya Nursery, there were perhaps 30-40 conkers each, but here, there were barely 15 between us. So the staff used a bit of ingenuity, and led us further up the hill.

Grape trees. Similar to the ones on Nakajima, there were wild grapes growing on the hills around town, and we tried to get some down. Unfortunately, the trees were a tangled mess and the grapes were high. After a brief bit of play-swordfighting and grabbing ahold of the lead teacher as she was on slippery ground, I eventually decided to show them how it was done. I grabbed the biggest stick I could, and I gently pulled downwards to get the main branch of the tree to a reachable level. After that, I simply used my height to grab it, and then the grapes. Of course, it was a team effort, and all the kids were helping pull the branches, but my grape-finding skills won me the respect of all the kids! All of them wanted to hold my hand on the walk back! (they have to walk holding hands in pairs or threes when on public roads).

Wild grapes similar to the ones we found. They were tough to get to!

After lunch, I also tried a bit more origami, and I find out that I’m truly bad at it! The teacher helped out so I at least made two things, albeit with great hardship, but it was then time to leave.

The two hours between the Nursery and the After School Club were, in all honesty, largely wasted. I began a new game on Pokémon Blue, though! I’m using Squirtle, and I’m doing so because I’ve used Charmander about a thousand times before and I want a change. I might go through the playthrough only levelling Squirtle, too, and see how that goes. Hopefully it’ll be interesting.

Squirtle! What an amazing Pokemon 🙂

The late afternoon was After School Club time once again. Today, very little of note happened. Happily, I got to eat some marshmallows, we played cards for a bit, we watched some Japanese children played Shogi (Japanese Chess). Then we played dodgeball again, winning one game and losing another.

A Shogi board – I have no idea what’s going on either. My only experience other than this was a brief minigame on Yakuza 2 on the PS2, wherein I won solely on luck 😉

Of course, the evening provided Kendo training. Kendo truly is brilliant – it’s a very precise martial art which requires a great deal of finesse. We learned two new types of fumikomi, and Matsubara-sensei lent us some better Shinai and some guards for them.

We ended the evening in the Onsen – where we met Matsubara-sensei again! After chatting a bit about Japanese food, we left for home to the Onsen’s closing song ‘Auld Langsyne’ – and yes, that perplexes me as well 😉

Toya Day 37: Highs, Lows and the Unhelpful High School Teacher

Oh my god, the greatest meme in all of history made an appearance in a High School textbook! I must share this before anything else because it made my day.

Here she is in all her glory!

Anyway, we got a bit of a lie-in this morning because we were doing the Mother-Kid’s Club. Now, this was a thing we’d planned quite extensively for, and as such we were feeling reasonably confident, even if we’d had nothing to go on when planning it. We breezed through teaching introductions, we breezed again through the alphabet, and then through emotions, and then finally through parts of the body. But then, there was a minor, how should I say, insurrection? One of the parents stood up and essentially told us we were doing it wrong, which was more than a bit soul-destroying! 😉

So then, we went to cry in some Kara-age. At least it tasted good 😉

In the afternoon, we began as we always do, by wasting a bit of time! Brendan was looking through the textbook and, as I mentioned, the Unhelpful High School Teacher was there! While I realize that she is now us, I couldn’t help but laugh! It genuinely made my day!

The book that she appears in. Brilliant!

I actually had to work after that, though. I worked on the Adult Class again, doing Arguments for the second time, and while I followed a similar premise, I used less serious issues to argue over (since the Japanese are very polite, they try not to voice their opinions, which is what made last week’s class like pulling teeth), and I put in example arguments. The issues were things such as ‘Tea is better than Coffee’ and ‘Too much chocolate is bad for you’. I actually got the plan down pretty fast, so then it was back to planning our Soyamisaki trip!

Soyamisaki is a long way from Toya – essentially the other side of Hokkaido – but the journey actually seems fairly straightforward. Basically, we take the train to Sapporo, then transfer in Sapporo to take the train to Wakkanai, and then finally take a bus to Soyamisaki. All in all, it takes about ten hours to get there, six of which is the train between Sapporo and Wakkanai. Erica helped us plan it, and we even found a kind of discounted rail ticket which will mean we’ll save about 1/3 of the price. She’s helping us plan the return trip on Friday, as well as to book a hotel in Wakkanai!

The JR Soya Main Line – our route to the northernmost point in Japan!

By the time that had finished, there was barely any time left in the house at all – we quickly ate some Seicomart-branded convenience food and it was then time to teach our adult class.

The lesson plan actually went well this time – the ‘stupid’ arguments meant that people were much less afraid to speak up, and people offered their actual opinions. Indeed, the only difficulties came when someone hadn’t done something like visit one of the mentioned Onsen or been to one of the mentioned restaurants. Those slides *may* have been subtle propaganda to get Shiro to take us to Noboribetsu and Blu-Sta again, but they worked in the context of the lesson, so they were justified! I think.

I also introduced the Japanese to the concept of biscuit-dunking, using some Dutch Shortcakes which had been posted out. Those are my favourite biscuits, so parting with them was not easy, but everyone enjoyed them so it was all fine! I enjoyed them too 🙂

They also seemed happy when I gave them some Twinings Tea!

I really hope that Shiro got the (subliminal) message, though!

 

Toya Day 36: OFSTED Strike Again…

Well, that was… unexpected.

Today, we worked in Toya High School again, and a very odd thing happened – we were subjected to an inspection by some Scary Government People. But I’ll come on to that in a second.

Since there was no first year class today, we had a significant swathe of the morning off, and we spent it doing what else? Arguing. This time actually over something relevant – education. Specifically, the usefulness of things like video, peer assessment, and what Brendan would call ‘all this new age crap’ in lessons. I took the side of the new age teaching methods – videos and such were genuinely useful in both Geography and Government and Politics, for finding case studies and examples, respectively. And peer assessment? Well, I lived and breathed that in Mr. Yates’ history class for a year, and that certainly came out pretty well! Brendan went all 1820 on me and started going on about how ‘the textbook is the most efficient way to learn’. I’ll come back to this after I’ve explained the Second Year class.

Alfie Wickers’ sage advice: ‘When you’re out of your depth, put on a video’.

Now, in this class, we had the scary Government people (or, as Kamada called them, the ‘Bigshots’) from the Hokkaido Board of Education, essentially making this the Japanese equivalent to a Japanese OFSTED inspection. Kamada seemed alright with it – speaking in his natural manner and seeming generally unphased, but then again, Kamada is the sort of man who wouldn’t looked phased by six Grizzly Bears – he’d merely say ‘Oh no’ in his calm, zen-like voice. The lesson seemed to go well enough – it was as normal, a bit of vocabulary practice followed by some reading, and a game at the end.

At the end of the lesson, rather unexpectedly, we were asked to attend the meeting with the Inspectors – we thought this was just for Kamada – we didn’t realise that we were in on this, too! Surprisingly however, the inspector was actually a fairly friendly man. He and Kamada discussed lessons (I presume the strengths and weaknesses, but I can’t be sure as they were conversing in Japanese!), and then he came to us as well. We discussed actually what we’d discussed earlier, the use of newer teaching methods in lessons. Of course, the main challenge in such things is relevance – you can’t do a class on directions and then watch The Lord of the Rings – but I’m of the opinion that such things could be helpful.

A great movie, but not necessarily helpful for teaching English – perhaps Elvish, but not English 😉

After that, we taught the Third Years, who were as loud as ever 😉 One kid in that class really confuses me – he has great English and he aces every test, but he just acts so dumb it’s untrue! He’s either the smartest or the dumbest kid in that school, and I really can’t decide which! Anyway, we did directions with them, and me and Brendan actually got to lead a bit of the class ourselves! Similar to the activity from the Elementary School, students directed each other around the class (some, even, out of the door!).

After another chat with Kamada-sensei, our work was over for the day, and hopefully we’ll not see the SGP (Scary Government People) for a long time!

We got home and cooked five-spice chicken again – it’s nice that Brendan likes something of mine! Yosakoi was the order of the evening, and it was nice to sort of eat a bit. But before that, the lady from the Mizu no Eki came and gave us some food – some Japanese sweets, some pumpkin and some sautéed burdock and carrot. Talking about burdock, I told her about the fizzy drink from home, and I’m going to give her a bottle to try. I also reciprocated with some English chocolate and some Twining’s Tea – she took the Dairy Milk Caramel dammit!

Few things make me happier 😉

At Yosakoi, nothing of huge import happened – we practiced more and are getting better at it, however, so hopefully we’ll be able to do the Yosakoi Festival in Sapporo!

Toya Day 35: Unique Among Project Trust Volunteers

Today marked a momentous and wonderful occasion – one that made me very happy indeed! But I’ll come on to that in a minute.

We awoke in our usual late fashion and got ready in our usual rushed manner. For the morning, we would be working in the Toya Nursery, and then we would have (a rather eventful!) session of desk work in the afternoon.

We arrived at the Nursery, and immersed ourselves once more in the chaos 😉 First, we played a little with some wooden blocks (playing pretend swords!), and then we lifted some of the children on our shoulders and gave them piggyback rides! I can only imagine the number of years we’d spend in jail for doing that at home, but it’s quite acceptable here.

Following this, we played with modelling putty a little bit. Brendan, who admits that he is useless at handicrafts, managed to make what essentially amounted to a sausage. I made several things – a Kamemushi, a fat snowman, a pizza and a hot dog in a bun among other things 🙂 Because, of course, I’m better at handicrafts than Brendan 😉

Outdoor play today was a session of picking up conkers from the woods nearby. This was fun, and it was productive too – I’m considering making my secondary project introducing the game of conkers to Japan! Apparently to the Irish too, since they apparently don’t have the game of conkers there. People of the UK, tell me what the best way to make a winning conker is! Do I bake them? Freeze them?

Conkers 🙂

After our shift in the Nursery had finished, we began to make plans for one of the things we most want to do – visit the extreme points of Japan. North and East are Cape Soya and Cape Nosappu, both in Hokkaido, south is Cape Sata in Kagoshima and West is Kozakihana in Nagasaki. It’ll be long weekends to Soya and Nosappu, we think, with trains from Sapporo going to Nosappu and a train actually straight from Abuta to Wakkanai which is near Soya. We’ll visit the two in Kyushu on our long trip.

Cape Soya is a lovely place, I’m sure, but I can’t help imagine it being depressingly bleak!

After that, we began planning for the lessons of the week, but then the mail arrived…

As well as several from home which had arrived (containing chocolate and a ski jacket), two had also arrived from Amazon Japan – one containing Pokemon White 2 and the other containing… well… you’ll never guess. Especially if you work for Project Trust.

A leather desk chair.

Yes, I’m certainly the first Japan volunteer to order such a thing and I’m quite possibly the first Project Trust volunteer to do so full stop. It was ¥7000, down from ¥14,000, and it’s quite fantastic 🙂 Much more comfortable than the squeaky chair which is now in the shed! It’s genuine leather and is very plush. I assembled it myself too, and Yako-san eve helped get it home! I’m typing this from it now, and I regret nothing ^_^

My new chair – worth every Yen!

The evening brought with it some culinary exploits in the form of Chinese Five-Spice Chicken (in a bowl over rice, so can I call it a donburi?) It tasted quite good! Although the point of this paragraph is more to point out one of those minor, niggling differences between the West and Japan. Japanese Chinese Five-Spice Powder is less sweet than the British take on it. I’m almost certain the Schwarz version contains a small amount of sugar – the Japanese one doesn’t. I’m sure that was interesting to someone!

Only Kendo remained. It feels like a long time since we’ve trained with Taka-san, and having both him and Matsubara there is always great. They’re both very highly ranked Kendoists and are amazingly good at the sport. We worked further on our overhead (Men) strikes, and rather encouragingly Matsubara-sensei said that we were learning quickly and would make Sho-dan by the time of the exam!

I certainly hope so!

Toya Day 34: Being on the Other Side

So, Date City was the order of the day, and we set off there… actually quite late. Thankfully, there are regular buses here in Japan and the lady in the Mizu no Eki was on hand to help us plan a route there and back (we found out about a much later, albeit longer bus back from Date, which transfers in Toyako Onsen and then goes to the Mizu no Eki but the other way around the lake. But I’ll get on to that in a bit.

We boarded the bus for Toyako Onsen at the Mizu no Eki at 1:30, passing Tsukiura, Toyako Onsen Elementary School, and little else. We were also the only people on the bus for the entire duration of the journey, which was quite nice because it takes ages to pay here as the change has to be exact.

Anyway, we transferred buses in Toyako Onsen without a hitch. It was a forty minute ride hence to Date City, and armed with our knowledge from last week, we didn’t have to shamelessly beg schoolgirls for help this time! Yes, that was embarrassing.

We departed at the Nisseki-Mae again, and we promptly decided to head for the AEON in which the KFC resides. When we arrived, we met one of our high school students in the game section and we had a brief chat about fried chicken and the expense of videogames in Japan – Dragon Quest X is almost ¥9000!

¥9000! That’s almost the price of the actual console these days!

Unfortunately, Brendan wasn’t hungry at this stage, so I only got a single piece of chicken to keep me going. And get going we did – Brendan wanted to find a sports shop, and we knew there wasn’t one in the parts of Date we’d already explored, so we visited the parts we hadn’t explored!

This began with a walk past the Sushi Restaurant and the Blu-Sta, where we realised once more that Yakiniku is the greatest thing in the world bar none. We wanted in, but it was closed and didn’t open until the evening. This leaves us with two options – either stay overnight in Date one weekend, or subtly persuade Shiro to take us again. Dammit, Yakiniku is so good!

After that, we walked into a clothes store, which was… odd. It was called ‘Jeans Casual’ and it looked normal enough as we entered. But then, things began to take a turn for the strange. The store clerks started… staring, and then they laughed at us. Was this a women’s shop? That seemed unlikely, as we saw another man trying shirts on. Was it just the novelty of foreigners? It was weird, so we left and decided that we’d ‘never visited’.

Continuing down the road, we eventually came to the seas of Uchiura Bay, from which you can see as far as Hakodate Subprefecture. Although the sea did look rather choppy! It got my geography brain on, wondering about the longshore drift along the Hokkaido Coastline. Mr. Gibson would be so proud!

The coastline of Date. In the distance, you can just about see Hakodate.

Following that excursion, we continued down the road to goodness knows where. As we proceeded, we noticed the music in the streets – kind of like relaxing piano music, which was odd to say the least! Brendan thought it was subliminal propaganda, while considered how the speakers would have been smashed if this were in Wakefield.

It was then finally time for some JFC! We headed back to AEON, wherein the six-piece bucket ensued.  I deserved it after the tiring, nursery-based week I’d had! Dear god, Erica must never know of this – I can hear the fat jokes already 😉

On the way to Date Eki (Station), we noticed a small Kendo shop, wherein I enquired about a Hakama and a Kendogi. I wanted to buy them, but they didn’t have my size! I need a 285, apparently, and the biggest they had was 275. However, the proprietress knew Taka-san, and she gave me some paper to give to him – no idea what it is, but I will anyway!

These things.

When we arrived in Toyako Onsen, we met a couple from Hong Kong who were staying in the area, and they spoke English! We talked a little about the highlights of the area, and we recommended they visit Noboribetsu Onsen. We also directed them to their hotel – I can only hope they didn’t get lost! Brendan then went for some noodles before we caught the bus home.

As I mentioned earlier, this was the long bus home, around Sobetsu and not direct to the Mizu no Eki. As such, it cost more, so the entire journey was preoccupied with Brendan questioning whether he had enough money! (Oh, and making plans to peg it just in case!)

The title in this post refers to us meeting our students numerous times in Date City. You know when you’re in school and you realise that ‘Wow, my teachers are actually human beings with actual lives!’? Well, it was that it reverse for us today. It was perplexing, and it is indeed very odd to be on the other side!

Toya Day 33: Melting in the Onsen

Well, today was almost exactly like last Saturday, and as a result we enjoyed it thoroughly! Onsen are always great, and today was no exception!

After the exhausting week we’ve had, we ended up sleeping in quite late, and we didn’t actually set off for Toyako Onsen until well into the afternoon (we’d resigned ourselves to cycling back in the night again). But we set off with only a small, Kara-age based delay!

It’s only been a week since we last visited Toyako Onsen, but the weather has changed quite drastically in that time. It’s gotten much colder – I actually wore my Austria Hoodie! The leaves are also finally starting to turn to their autumn colours, and they looked very beautiful indeed! The sun was quite low in the sky as we were cycling, and it’s quite clear at such times why Toyako Onsen is visited by tourists from all over Asia and the World.

I thought that this was a nice panorama. The sun gets low very early here – this was about 2:30!

On the way (just outside Toyako Onsen Elementary School, actually), we met an old man who spoke a bit of English. He said his daughter was in Pennsylvania University in the US, and will be doing a year in Cambridge from March. We also explained a little about ourselves. More importantly, he then gave us food! He gave us an apple each (which are expensive here, about £1.50 each!) and several plums – all of which were fantastic! The plums were very sweet and the apple was succulent. It had been a pleasant encounter 🙂

Autumn is definitely here now – the leaves are beginning to turn colour.

About five minutes down the road, however, things got unpleasant – rain! And lots of it! Japanese rain doesn’t come in small amounts, and we were very much caught out. It started out lightly, but by the time of our arrival in Toyako Onsen it was veritably pouring. Of course, by that point, we were only a very short cycle from our hot spring of choice, so it didn’t bother us so much.

Toyako Onsen’s Onsen was wonderful once again 🙂 Even better, the rain had created some cool air which contrasted nicely with the heat of the outdoor onsen (which is covered by a canopy, by the way!). You never quite feel so clean or refreshed as when you leave a good Onsen – they truly are amazing! While in Toyako Onsen’s Onsen changing room, I also partook of a shave with the provided razors, which were actually pretty good. Japanese shaving foam, however, is somewhat odd – it has an almost menthol-ish sensation about it, which feels quite strange.

This is the Onsen we like in Toyako Onsen – the minerals in the water (which give the yellow colour) are good for the skin, too!

Anyway, after our soak, we decided to try our luck with the Canadian Restaurant again, and thankfully it had stopped raining by this point. We cycled up the hill to the restaurant and were relieved to see that it was open this time! We enjoyed a fantastic Katsu Kare and a beer there (the lady was very surprised when she found we’d cycled up!), and the staff were even kind enough to tell us about a shortcut home – one that cut about 20 minutes off our trip! It brought us out just after Toyako Onsen Elementary School, and the rest of the cycle home seemed comparatively short after that 🙂

After getting home, I decided to play a bit of the game that my amazing mum sent out to me – a weird game called 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors – it’s kind of part RPG, part point-and-click adventure, part puzzle and part visual novel. I’m enjoying it very much, it feels kind of different so it all feels fresh as a result. It also has an intriguing story, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of it! It also has a 3DS/Vita sequel coming out soon, so I’m looking forward to it!

This game 🙂

Anyway, sorry for all the late blogs this week – it’s been a very physically demanding nursery-based one! With some luck, next week will be easier!