Anyone wanna buy my things?

I seem to have accumulated a great many things in the two years I've been back in New Zealand. My nesting instinct is well and truly ingrained. Many of these things are practical and useful and it is the practical and useful things that I thought people might like to take off my hands for a few dollars. I hope this doesn't seem cheap! I just seem to buy the same things over every time I move (stupid countries with stupid different electricity thingees) so figured you all might also need such things. I don't want much for anything. Some stuff just a couple of bucks and maybe $10ish for the bigger things. Chur.

Here they are.

Tools. Good for building.
There is a hammer, three sizes of nails, screws, screw drivers, wire cutters and pliers. I found building with these tools most satisfying.


Phone. I think I bought it 2 years ago. Battery still seems to be working well.












Sake set. Only had one bottle of sake so not much used. Not awesome quality but the jug is good for filling the iron.












Cooling racks. Small one is cake-sized, the large one is many-biscuit or excess-dishes sized. Highly practical.










Salt shaker and pepper grinder. Good as a second set if you want one for the dining room and one for the kitchen. Grinder grinds, shaker shakes. Yus.

Wee rimu chopping board. My hand isn't hiding anything, it's just there for size-indication.

Bowls! Excellent quality heavy pottery. A few week chips around the edges.












Cheapy wee teapot with filter.

















Tea cannisters.









Another cheapy wee tea pot with a filter.













Lovely wee teacups.














Electric beater. Less than a year old. Makes an excellent banana cake. I still have the box.









Whizz stick. Tehehe.














Many many 80's patterns.



















Good scales. Just replaced the batteries. They do pound and ounces and grams and mls and all sorts. The bowl is a bit damaged, I think it much have had a run in with the stove.


There are a few more tea cups and a box of clothes and fabric people are welcome to look through on Friday before I op-shop them on Saturday.

So long and thanks for all the fish

After I left Hamada I bounced around Japan for the better part of a month. I went to Lena's in Yakami, Janelle's in Yonago, Marie's in Matsue, back to Lena's, Leah's in Hamada (sans Leah), Maddy's in Matsue, Steph's and Setsuko's out on Oki, Karla's in Yakami, a wee hotel in Osaka, Damian and Kaori's in Choshi and lastly at the house of their lovely Obachan in Asahi. It was quite the trip. I got back to NZ thoroughly exhausted and spent a couple of days with the extended family in Auckland and then got down to Wellington and...

I've been back in New Zealand for over a week now but have yet to re-enter life here properly. I've spent a week holed up in my parents house being sick and doing absolutely nothing. This will end today, but before I start life here I'd just like to say how much I am missing Japan.

I am missing Japan, and I think I will keep missing Japan even once my time there starts seeming like a dream, or a movie I used to watch too often. Right now I am missing the food - Japanese food was good to me and I wish I had paid more attention when Setsuko cooked or when Yoshida guided me through tricky techniques or when Funada and I gossiped and made sweets. I am missing my wee house and knowing exactly how everything around me fits together (I am prepared to accept I went a little strange living by myself, but I am honestly finding this big house and its having other occupants rather odd). I am missing the community that I lived in, the guy at the bus stop who would shake his head sadly when I had missed the bus, the nice ladies at the supermarket who know I don't need bags. I am missing Nori. I am missing my bike and biking around all night and never feeling nervous in the dark. I am missing school and teaching. I miss my kids a lot, and I miss my office ladies (hmmm maybe I miss employment? nah). I don't miss being so noticeable but it does take some getting used to being so very ordinary. I feel invisible walking down the street here, being average height with normal proportions and normal coloured hair. So yeah. In my limbo state, before I launch myself back into life in NZ. I just wanted to say. I had an amazing time. And I miss Japan.

But more than that I am almost scared to start again here because as it is everywhere we go, whatever we are doing and for whatever reason, it is the people we meet who make life the ridiculous, rich, riotous experience that it is. And I don't want to forget all the wonderful people I have met over the past two years. I have met some pretty incredible people. On the island I met my ladies who kept me sane(ish) and well fed, and who taught me so much about being just where you are. On the mainland (both years) I met crazy gaijin friends who shared the strange and unusual trip that is Japan. And everywhere I went I met people who I danced with, drank with, laughed with, shared a moment on a train with, argued with, went crazy with... people who I will keep thinking about, people who I will lose touch with but whose memory will make me chuckle at inappropriate moments for years to come. Thanks guys.

Now to ditch the dressing gown and find a bus timetable...

Gnah. I must sleep now.

Another month...
All you really need to know is that everything has ended and it has rained.
I'll put a whole bunch of photos over on flickr to catch you up on where, what and how I have been, because I really ought to be cleaning.
But I shall tell one wee story tonight.
Yesterday was the first day that it has not rained in many, many weeks, and I was feeling a less cranky and having-a-coldy than I have been in about as many weeks, so I decided that conditions were ripe for a run. I didn't run. I decided I didn't have time and so biked my old running-course (I did of course have time for a quick run, what I really shouldn't have made time for was the cutting and sticking of many purikura, the reading of Hardy (comfort food for the brain) , the baking of two carrot cakes, one apple cake and one lemon slice (would be such as shame to see those ingredients going to waste), the watching of inter-net TV and ah... the uploading of photos. Running would have been much better for the stress/sleep thing. ) (I like brackets.)
I was thinking as I biked my old run-way, about all the last times I have been having. There have been so many conscious endings going on and because I am happy here they've all been sad. But it is all the unconscious last times that have been making me most melancholy. When I went running for the last time those week ago before the rain and the coughing started, I didn't know it was the last time. Did I look around? Did I nod to the bald quartet (two men, a woman and a dog) sitting on their door step? Did I exchange ganbarre!s with the arm-swinging old couple? I dunno. It's like after a break-up when you think about all the little things you took for granted when there is no-one there who knows to order extra condiments with the chips. A little off track. Forgive me. It is 2am.
So. I guess all I'm really saying is that I hate good-byes and all the forced memory-making. It doesn't matter what I did on my last run because running was a cumulative memory (and an oddly addictive activity for someone who has always avoided exercise on dry land (except soccer)) and it's the same with my fine friends, super students, tenacious teachers and all.
I'll be back in Wellington in less than a month now. I'll be out of my house in a day and a half... which means I have to be all packed tomorrow. Panic. Panic... sleep.
The last eight hours of merry making are starting to take their toll. It is time to sleep.

The running place

Taiko

Tubing

Primary school goodbyes

School trip to AQUAS

Chess

Hamada farewell party

Enjoy!!

JAGS has JAGSded

I really am sorry about the lack of news on this thing. Since discovering TV on the internet my life has become filled with the the inanity of re-runs and the obsessive need to watch every last episode of Scrubs, Six Feet Under and many shows of a much lower calibre. It keeps occurring to me that this is an odd way to spend my last few months in Japan, but then I choose to view it as both a necessary escape from the reality that my time here is ending and a tool of reintegration back into English speaking society.

But my time has also been more gainfully employed. For the past few months I have been involved in the planning and execution of an art exhibition called JAGS (that thing what I made the plastic tree for last year). Now that the actual exhibition has begun (it opened on Saturday) I have time to draw breath again and take stock of my situation and impending departure.

My impending departure scares me silly so instead I am going to ramble about the exhibition and post some nice photers.

Fundraising stuff for JAGS went like this:
First we baked delicious foreign treats...

...then we sold them to the curious localsThen we raised funds with an exciting rock concert
Then there was an 80's party in Matuse which I sadly couldn't go to ...Then we exhibited!
Rebecca and I took the Friday off school to get stuff set up, but the day before opening we still had only half the artwork... but thankfully almost all the JETs from Hamada and it's surrounds came to the rescue the next day and everything went swimmingly.
I don't have any photos of the opening because I was running around like a sleep-deprived headless chicken (they are the worst kind) trying to make sure everything was ready for everybody. I was interviewed by three news papers in which I tried to put a positive spin on my rather critical artwork and Nori's Mum's kagura group did an awesome performance. I will post pics when I get them.
So for the last week and a half the exhibit has been ticking along. I took some photos one grey afternoon when there was no one there and you can find those here.
I shall leave you all with a picture of my tree.
It is made of used (then cleaned) disposable chopsticks. Japan uses over half the world's disposable chopsticks and when China slapped a tax on them in an effort to curb deforestation, Japan took its business elsewhere - to Indonesia and Thailand where illegal logging is rife. And they are totally unnecessary. No restaurant I went to in Korea used them.

Der Besuch der alten Dame

I know that is a wildly inappropriate title but it was the first thing I thought of when my office-lady-friend commented "Your old-lady-friendo visit. Wow."

Yesterday morning I got an email on my phone from Yamamoto Obachan (little aunty) from Oki. It was long, detailed and in kanji. It saddened me how difficult it was to understand - when I received such mails daily my Japanese comprehension was much, much better. Anyway. I managed to get through all the bit about how she was and where she was living and how her aunt and uncle were doing and how the weather was warming up, and then I went to class without reading the last sentence 今おばちゃんは、アクアライナーで浜田に向かってます。 "Right now, I am on a train to Hamada."

And so it came about that at cleaning time, Yamamoto Obachan and three of her obachan friends came to visit me at school. Due to various untimely happenings (including Obachan having to leave the island half an hour before I arrived to visit a sick relative) I hadn't seen her since shortly after I left the Oki, so I was really touched that she still thought me worth the effort!

We stood in the corridor while she and her friends prodded me to make sure I was good and healthy and then talked about food, the weather, old times and old friends, while my students and teachers gawked and giggled. It was lovely to see Obachan, and her friends (one of whom was a ni-chu alumnus and another of whom taught one of the teachers here) have promised to look after me. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy and cared-for.

Those of you who read my rambles in my first few months in Japan will recall my adventures eating various sea creatures at Obachan's and my bafflement at evening after evening of Japanese game shows. Before I leave Japan I plan to spend a week on Oki. I am looking forward to cooking with her again and sitting in her little front room on hot summer evenings and watching still-incomprehensible Japanese TV. I am just really not looking forward to saying goodbye.

Today everything smelt wonderful.

It might just be because I am finally regaining my sense of smell after a couple of weeks of being sickly, but today everything smelt wonderful.
It was dim and grey this morning (when I got up early to call the IRD) and the whole day was cool but very humid. The morning smelt like dirt, good earthy spring time dirt. It is a smell akin to rain on hot concrete, but more... subtle. Then the wind came up off the warm sea and the kids playing soft tennis on the balconies started shrieking and everything smelt salty. Now the wind is blowing a gale and my doors are shaking and everything smells new.