Bits and Pieces

So I've also decided that I'm going to add a collection of odd things that I find in this place, just knick-knacks and things that I either find amusing or interesting, it may be something that's a great idea, or an example of Engrish that I find on a sign somwhere.
On the train on the way to Nikko.

Not only are these all labeled as rule no. 1, but now I find I'm not allowed to take my goldfish with me.
This is sheer brilliance, great ingenuity. In fact, I have invented this myself in my head many a time. It's a drink, as well as a holder for your chips, and I found one for real yesterday at Mos Burger, a joint over here that is an exquisite eatery.

Trains, Temples, and Harajuku Girls

Last weekend I had perhaps the most eventful weekend I've had since I've been here. Friday was a public holiday, so there was no school. I went to an international festival, and helped out making mochi - I've mentioned mochi before - making rice cakes by pulverising the living daylights out of rice that has done nothing to deserve it. It was pretty cool, and I wound up meeting a few Peruvians, so I'll probably get some Spanish practice in the future too.

On Friday evening, my friend Liz arrived. We did Japanese at uni together, and now she's over here teaching at a high school in Mishima, about an hour south of Tokyo. On Saturday, we visited Nikko, this time, spending the day around Toshogu Shrine. It's a collection of temples and shrines that has been around since about 1650.

Just before the entrance to the shrine, stands the "oldest" bridge in Japan. Originally erected in the eighth century, the bridge has been reconstructed several times, most recently in 2005. Then at the entrance to the main shrine stands the gate. These gates are found at all shrines in Japan, and vary in size and grandeur. After proceeding through the main gate is another, smaller one, with two statues guarding the building itself. Most look incredibly aggressive, and not very representative of the peace loving Buddhists they protect.

Of the at least ten statue guards around the shrine, there was only one that didn't look aggressive. He just looked ready with a sword across his knees, waiting for someone to do wrong. Aside from most of the threatening looking guards they had there, everything else about Toshogu was very peaceful. A nice collection of Temples, and a five-storeyed peculiarly built pagoda. It was built in 1650, reconstructed in 1818. The reason it is peculiar is that it was built with no foundations, at all. Instead, it apparently has a long pole, suspended from the top, which balances everything out after an earthquake. We had chosen a good time to visit, as the kouyou (autumn colours) were still about. Very nice indeed.

Not only was it the kouyou that made last Saturday as wonderful as it was, but also, we stumbled across the only non-Japanese shop/restaurant in the whole of Nikko. It wasn't that we don't like Japanese food or anything, Japanese food is delicious. But so is the Lamb we had at the New Zealand Fair! A perfect meal, a little pricey at 2250 yen (about NZ$25), but totally worth it!

After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon learning about different things around Toshogu. It is, for example, home to the three monkeys, you know hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil? Also, there is a carving of an elephant, which represents it quite well, and the interesting thing about it is that the artist never saw an elephant, or an image of an elephant in his life. Pretty good, right? Also, we found out what the priests do with their spare time (I'm surprised that they have any spare time, the place is always packed!!!) - they make whisky, and I like to imagine that they drink it there too, I think it would make the service a lot more interesting, and would probably also explain why we only saw two priests the whole time we were there...

So after the day at Nikko, we headed back to Utsunomiya to eat some gyoza, this fair city's claim to fame in Japan. After this we headed out to meet up with some friends at Round 1 Stadium, the most incredible place on the face of the planet*. It hosts a bowling alley, pachinko parlour (not like the 'pachinko' that Elliot says on Scrubs, the Japanese form isn't a word used to describe someone's unmentionables, it's a gambling game), and the most incredible part. For about NZ$20, you get three hours access to an arcade parlour, a roller skating/mini-motorbike rink, shooting range, karaoke, an open-roof sports practice area (baseball, basketball, volleyball, badminton, tennis, golf, archery, etc), a mechanical bull, and, although disturbing (I didn't try it), fishing, with live fish, that you catch and release back into the pond. The fishing aside, this place was fanfreakingtastic.

On Sunday, we were up nice and early, well, 9am, and ready to set out for Tokyo. I find it very hard to believe that, living in a city like Utsunomiya, with a population roughly comparable to Wellington, a place that doesn't seem as big as Wellington, that I am only 45 minutes away from a metropolis of near 13 million people! We took the "shink" or shinkansen (bullet train) into Tokyo, with no specific schedule for the day. First of all, we had a look around the Akihabara, Tokyo's electric town. It wasn't as impressive at day as it is at night, but it was still busy enough for the main road to have been shut off to cars to be made more accessible for the thousands of tourists who made their way through the area. After Akihabara, we made our way to Ikebukuro, because Liz and I had both heard of it in Japanese class, and couldn't remember for what. The most interesting things we found there were an extremely long escalator in a concert hall, and the fact that the concert hall was showing an Austin Powers-esque musical, that we agreed after much discussion is called "How to Suck Shit" (for those that can't read Japanese, that's the closest we've been able to figure from what the title says, it's the alphabet they use for foreign words, and literally says "Hau Tuu Saku Shiito"). If anyone can make a less offensive and more meaningful title, please let me know!

After Ikebukuro, it was time for us to visit Harajuku, and yes, there were Harajuku girls, just like in Gwen Stefani's songs. Also, there were Harajuku guys, and almost everything about the Harajuku fashion sense was scary. They had black goth kimono (Japanese traditional-wear), as well as "western" styled "clothing". Several of the people in Harajuku looked as though they had just stepped out of an American diner in the 1950s, and were about to break into chorus, you know, like Westside Story or something. Also, the main shopping street of Harajuku was insanely congested. There were literally tens of thousands of people manoeuvring down a road no more than 3 metres wide. It's enough to make anyone claustrophobic really. At the end of the street, we crossed the road. I wasn't going to take a picture of the building on the other side, until the pink Cadillac drove past it. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get them both in the same shot. What's he talking about, you're probably thinking. What kind of shop could possibly be made more interesting with a pink Cadillac in front of it? or Any shop would be more interesting with a pink Cadillac in front of it, you moron! But, this shop was particiularly interesting. It's called Condomania, and doesn't really need to advertise it's products, the name is sufficient for that. It's there with it's mascot, a personified image of a condom, out for people of all ages to see. And I thought that I just had to take a photo of it with a cool pink Cadillac next to it, even if I do have to use two photos to be able to display it.

That was pretty much all of the excitement we had for the day, and so it was ended by a nice early dinner at the Sensouji shrine in Asakusa (I don't know how they manage to fit so many of these shrines and temples in a city this big!), before we parted ways and returned home, a busy yet brilliant weekend had by all. Dinner was not eaten on this boat restaurant, but I thought it looked nice enough to have a show here.

*It is possible, but yet to be proven, that Round 1 Stadium is in fact, not the most incredible place on the face of the planet. More news will come if a better place is ever discovered.

Intro - a short insight to the first eight weeks

So I've finally decided to start a blog. It's only taken eight weeks, not bad really I think. I could've waited a year.

So anyways, I've been in Utsunomiya, Japan for about eight weeks now, and it's going really well. I arrived after about 13.5 hours of travel - 8,841km by plane from Auckland to Tokyo (10.5 hours), and then 95km by car (it took 3 hours - insane, right?) from Tokyo to my apartment.












I was greeted by two friends from here, as well as one of the other English teachers, Matt. Had a few drinks, and was then left to fend for myself in a foreign land for the first time in my life.

I only had one day before I started work, so I thought I would use it productively, and familiarise myself with my surroundings. Unfortunately, this meant spending about two hours trying to find the way back from the convenience store not five minutes away from home. Eventually I found my way, and relearnt (I guess I had kind of forgotten) that you have to rely on landmarks here, because most roads don't have names in this country. You learn to deal with it quite fast.

The next day it was time for work. My base school until January is Takaragi Junior High, about a ten minute bike ride from here. According to the teachers there, it's the worst school in the city, and "if you can teach here, you can teach anywhere". Personally, I don't believe them, the school doesn't seem to be as bad as they portray it to be. The first day, luckily for me, I didn't have to teach, and was just introduced to teachers and other staff. My first teaching day was saved for the next day, and was at an elementary school.

These precious little treats from Kamitomatsuri Elementary were the first kids I have ever taught in my life, and it was a great place to start. The kids at elementary schools are all energetic, and enthusiastic about English, and just the fact that there is a non-Japanese person in front of them. The lessons are extremely simple, but also very informative. For me. I have learned, for example, that Japanese people believe I am a talented artist. I doubt this. I draw a simple map of New Zealand, and another of Japan, neither of which even somewhat begin to depict any realistic image of either country, and they all applaud, and congratulate me. Although I know the truth, it does feel pretty cool to be applauded for a simple drawing.

The following week I began working at the Junior High, planning and taking lessons, and learning that being a teacher takes a lot more effort than I had given any of my teachers credit for. I'm still learning, and it will be a long and slow process. That said, it's still fun, and there are a lot of activities that kids do here that we don't do back home.



One of these activities is the annual rice harvest. Every year, the students plant rice, and then harvest it, on a rice field just out the front of the school. One point that I observed while watching/helping with the harvest was that there are at least as many frogs in the rice fields as there are grains of rice. They are full of them, I must have seen at least 200 of them in this one field alone.

Another activity that the kids do is called mochi-tsuki, where they make Japanese rice-cakes. Half cooked rice is put into a hollowed out tree stump, and is pulverised with large wooden mallets until it forms a soft, sticky dough. It is quite a fun activity, and a great way to vent any stress or frustration you have.


A few weeks after I arrived, and thanks to Facebook
(yes, there's a link, because everyone who's not on it should be), I met up with some other foreigners who teach English over here - Americans Chris, Tawny and Tim, Canericans Anthony and Sarah (so called because he's Canadian and She's American and they're married), fellow Kiwi Lisa, and Irish/Finnish Juhani. Most weekends we find something to do together, whether it be karaoke, a visit to a local izakaya (Japanese pub), or just drinks at someone's house. It's definitely handy to know other English speakers, as I frequently go days without having a "proper" English conversation.

One of the things I was happy to have done one weekend was to visit Nikko and see the Autumn Colours in full swing. Along the way we saw some Monkeys, and had plenty of time to photograph them, as what we thought would be a 20-25 minute bus trip, turned into a four hour crawl up to our final destination of Akechidaira. This was because we had not been informed that the entire Japanese population was descending on Nikko on the same day as us. It was ridiculous!

Since Nikko, nothing particularly special has happened, and this first post is already long enough, so I'll update more later on.