Tasty

Mother said my blog has been rather confusing of late so this evening - instead of cleaning or packing or pursusing any mundane, necessary employment - I will offer a selective and consise update of my recent doings.
As the one person who views all of my flickr photos will know, I have had some delicious experiences lately.
The first was in Tokyo in a dear place called MOS burger (I don't know if it is always necessary to capitalise the entire word but I like to) me and Kaori went for some delicious MOS while Damian was at his band practise with a fellow in a bear suit. The lettuce-encased freshness burger has since become an option at my local MOS outlet. This is intensely pleasing.

Also (not pictured) I went to Hiroshima to sit a test that I didn't know the answers to and ate deliciousness in an Irish pub. Also the cricket was on TV. Pleasant.
Then.
This weekend.
We had a Christmas party.
And it was delicious.
And later I was a polar bear.
We all cooked many tasty things.

The Heater

Donna bought a heater
An electric heater
The elements were made of wire and clay
She reached out to touch and she heard a voice say
And she heard it say
"Come on and plug me in
I want to feel that heat begin
Don't move till the morning comes
And you can fly up to the sun
So come on and plug me in
Plug me in
Plug me in"
Donna liked her heater
Her electric heater
Upstairs alone with the elements
She dream of gold and frankincense
(frank, frank, frankincense)
And she heard it say
"Come on and plug me in
I want to feel that heat begin
Come close and listen while I sing
I won't melt your precious wings
So come on and plug me in
Plug me in
Plug me in"
"Come on and plug me in
I want to feel that heat begin
Although my body is rusting through
I have carried this song for you...
It's from the Sphinx and the Serpent too
So plug me in"

It's most true. Except the wire and clay bit... and I think my heater speaks Japanese... and I haven't been dreaming of frankencense lately - I had a weird one about performance artists in polar fleece this afternoon though. Also I didn't buy the heater, it was purchased for me by my BOE. But I spent so much time singing this song on my bike (I've said it before and I'll will say it again, biking and singing is a most rejuvinating thing) that I just wanted to share.
All credit and glory to Don McGlashen.

I love dates

Sorry it has been some time since my last post but I am currently without computer. It will be returning to me this Wednesday though, and I am very excited. Also in the exciting things catergory is my upcoming trip to Tokyo. I will be taking the night bus (not exciting) on Wednesday night and staying with Damian and Kaori in Chiba until Sunday. I will shop. And stuff.
So, the last threeish weeks... um. We had an open mike night at the beginning of the month and to compliment (and contrast with) the classy blues, stirring protest songs, and delightful ballads, Ed and I decided to sing One Day a Taniwha, Tu Tera Mai Nga Iwi, and Po Kare Kare Ana we stopped short of Uma Rapiti - we need to keep a few tricks up our sleeves. Then we had Guy Fawkes at which much fun was had by me lighting fire works and running on rocks. There was also a roaring fire and fine company. T'was nice.
Um we also had Mid-Year Seminar, the annual gathering of JETs from all over the prefecture and I played touch rugby with much enthusiasm and little skill (have mastered the running up and down bit but not the passing/catching bit) then I played soccer in much rain.
This week I taught Ti Rakau for a cultural workshop at the biggest Junior High School in Hamada. It was a bit of an eye opener. I find the kids at my school pretty rough compared to the island kids, but these kids definitely out-scary mine. Their trousers are wider, their jackets shorter, mullets spikier and dyed-oranger and their respect for authority of any kind is markedly less. I was rather concerned about giving then sticks and making them sing but E Papa Waiari went down a treat.
This weekend my school had it's cultural day. But that is another story.
So now you know.

And since the chronology isn't electrifyingly interesting, here are some random facts about me just now.

Bad things:
My lip hurts because I zipped it into my jacket this morning.
My elbow hurts because I tried to climb a tree on Friday night.
My house has no heating of any kind.
I have not done any sort of Christmas shopping.

Good things:
My house is sparkling and clean.
I made a bag with a dog on it.
I now have 2 pairs of polar-fleece trousers. They are pleasing.
I will be at home in the sun in three and a bit weeks.
After feeling pretty muh for a while I have been much chirpier this past week.
I found a pair of stripy socks I had forgotten about in a box in my bathroom.

Other things:
I can fit 19 dates in my mouth. (Mum sent me dates)
I am having my first hair-cut in Japan tomorrow.

Halloweening

On Saturday we had a Halloween party for primary school students here. Much fun was had by all (at the party at least, I am sure there would have been a few rather disgruntled parents and tears before bedtime when then sugared, scared and face-paint-smeared wee ones got home). We have been sort-of rehearsing for the Halloween play for the past few weeks but the preparation began in earnest on the Wednesday afternoon and continued apace until minutes before the kiddies arrived. On Friday night I carved my very first pumpkin. It was fun and far less dangerous than I had imagined due to some specialised tools we had been sent from the States.

On Saturday morning we all showed up bright and early (and looking spectacular)

for last minute practise (I was reminded that I was in charge of a 15 minute dance... which I successfully delegated) then we divided up the afternoon's responsibilities...
I have to say that sitting in an dark room, waiting to scream at small, terrified children was one of the odder things I have intentionally taken part in, even in Japan. My first haunted house and I was a haunter. Reactions ranged from yelping, to charging (one particularly boisterous child I dumped from a considerable height and then tickled) to uncontrollably shaking, to dismissing me with a "uh, Donna-sensei da". Indeed.

Other highlights of the day were me as the devil in the Jack-o-Lantern story and a small child backing away from me and crying when I entered the room. One of my favourite things in costume is when people don't recognise and a couple of my kids refused to believe I was me until they spotted the eye-brow piercing. Grand.
After a night of little sleep I headed out on a field trip with a lovely bunch of exchange students on Sunday. There are some pictures which tell the story passably well on my flickr page. Enjoy.

Hope you are all thriving and I will try and catch up with emails properly this week.
loves much

I ate till it hurt tonight. It still hurts. Why are roasted root vegetables so irresistible? I just don't know.

The time has come

Talking about last weekend has become rather overdue. I am forgetting the finer details so I will do what I can to offer you a brief but exhilarating account before I lose all sense of my Oki-time.

From the top: the enkai (work party) on Friday wasn't much to write home about, we had a tasty dinner at which everyone consumed a modest amount of beer and/or chuhai and I was then officially welcomed and asked a few questions (like why I decided to pierce my eyebrow) and the hot caretaker was officially farewelled. The second party of which I had such expectations was only me, the principal, the vice-principal, the disciplinary teacher, and another old fellow who lived on Oki long ago. I was urged to sing unchained melody and perform a duet with one of the old ladies at the bar that the headmaster was trying to crack onto.

I headed for Oki on the Saturday and had to get ready all in a rush to get the train to get the four-hour ferry because the fast boat was cancelled because of the 4-and-a-half metre waves.
I was picked up by Mis. Nobe and Helen and Steph, (my friend/former JTE and the two new ALTs respectively) and taken to Tsudo to stay at Ms. Nobe's house and be fed many kinds of deliciousness. The next day we were picked up by Yoshida, Funada, Tori and a few others for a pleasant day of surprise expeditions. It was most excellent. We had many more kinds of my favourite foods in picnic form up by a waterfall and collected delicious spring water, and then hung out at a small lake with retired ducks. There was also chestnut collection going on. It was so nice and comfortable to be with all these familiar folk and know I have not been forgotten. That evening I we went for some karaoke with Rika(rika) and the next day Helen and I baked a cake which we ate with Konaka-san (my old supervisor) and then with Kate (really Yawata) and then I went back to Hamada on the ferry.

So all in all it was lovely. But it was lovely like staying at my parents house now and then when I was having a hard time at uni was lovely - I felt rested and reassured but I don't think it was the place for me to be living all the time. I do think I made the right decision to leave - there are negatives to being where I am, but they are certainly no worse than the island negatives, and there are also nice things and people in both places.

In other news on Friday I went to Matsue with Makiko (one of my students) and Hinohara-sensei (one of my two JTEs) for the prefectural own-composition (read: ghost-written by yours truly) English speech competition... and Makiko won! So she will now be going to Tokyo for the national competition. I want also to be going to Tokyo for the national competition but don't think I can afford it because of all that coming home for Christmas stuff. But still, it was very exciting.

In other, other news, there was a cockroach in my cutlery drawer this morning so I just spent lots of time scrubbing all the poison and cockroachy-ness off all my utensils and I now have pruny hands.

A ponder on the subject of transportation

I am not feeling up to describing my whole entire weekend just now (see what I am cunningly doing, is building up suspense with these tidbits so when I finally write about it you will all be ready to understand how lovely it all was) so I decided to report on my musings about boats, trains and planes.
I will first have to reveal a segment from the very end of my weekend...
I had waited until what my companions considered to be the last minute (not to be confused with the actual last minute in which I usually operate) to board the boat. There being quite a few actual minutes left I spent a long time watching my friends from the boat and intermittently waving. During this time I took some photos of the port and on the ferry I pondered them.
I think I have decided what it is I like so much about train stations and ferry ports but not airports. When I first left New Zealand for Germany back in 2000 I took a picture of the railway tracks on the way from Petone to the airport and it was so pleasing it stayed on my desk all year. I like the way that these places all all set up with ingenuity and precision, in straight, clean, shiny lines - and then the world around them (the sea air and the commuters feet and the city dust) comes and has a nibble, and dulls the tracks to the colour of the rocks and chews little random patterns into the paint and everything adjusts to its surroundings. As a passenger on such services I appreciate both the shiny new times and the grime, shadows and (reasonable safety-wise) signs of age. I don't like airports because they are the opposite, air travel is so necessarily artificial and wrenching. Humph.

All that said and I just realised I managed to leave my USB cable on Oki so no pictures for tonight.

Who could ask for anything more...

My weekend even had ducks.
And I like ducks.

It's gonna be a long weekend (in a good way)

Thanks folks for all the emails, I should send out an "Oy yew, read thus" message more often. In retrospect the crazy awake post was possibly not the best note to advertise myself on... you can all rest assured that I have been resting since and am becoming saner by the day.
This evening I (finally) have my welcome enkai for school which will be interesting. Normally workplace relationships in Japan are jump started with a bout of drunken humiliation but I have had to wait until I have formed some fairly clear ideas about my co-workers before I've seen them cut loose. Watch this space...
Tomorrow I will be heading to Oki for the long weekend. I am sure I will have some amusing anecdotes to share with you all next week.
Today while trawling the internet like the diligent employee that I am, I found a tribute site and I would like to leave you with some of the joys of Michael Leunig.
I like the way he thinks about:

GoatsWar
Law

and Ducks

I really like ducks.

Netai (want to sleep)

This writing thing could become addictive for me and tiresome for you all, but I just thought I'd write about my last night because there was such a lot of it.
I have been building up (unintentionally you understand) to a no-sleep for a week or so now - I started last Sunday and have have been getting less and less sleep since (which made me rather surly last week (sorry) and also made my primary school visit seem particularly cruel and unusual) but this was the first time in a very long time that I have had an entire night without a wink. I had quite forgotten how the no-sleep process works.
Normally, although it is dependant on the the timing of the original sleeping attempt, I give up on sleep at about 3-4ish and then can get on and do something productive, but last night, despite my filthy apartment and my many planned sewing projects, I was extremely loath to commit to not sleeping and instead I played Civilization for an hour and achieved nothing (except partial world domination).
I finally had my 'no sleep is going to happen tonight' moment at 5:42 when I noticed how light it was getting outside, but by that time it was too late to be creative, innovative, or hygiene-restorative so instead I tied a sock around my head and put on Leonard Cohen (I have this theory that his voice slows down my heart-rate) and hummed along until my alarm started. I spent today in the unsteady foggy place that one's brain goes when it hasn't had enough time out (which could be a rather nice place were it not for the funny shaky body) and now am trying to while away the hours till I can get a good nights sleep (attempt to go to bed to early and I risk rebounding into wakefulness). If I don't get a solid slumber I believe I shall have to go begging for a place to crash on Thursday night because despite my complaints about the years of sharing a room, I always sleep better with others around.
Right am off to have some dinner and a nice cup of herbal-absolutely-decaffeinated-tea.
loves much
donna

September happened

While changing this over to the new site, I saw just how diligent I once was at keeping you all informed about my various doings. Even when there really wasn't so much doing being done. Imagine the things you could know about my new and exciting life! But somehow my people based interactions don't seem as writable-about as my little musings and happenings. I will offer for you all a sample of my recent party going and exciting social life and then, if I am still communicative, I will tell you all about my new school. Desperately intrigued? Totally riveted? Mildly flatulent? I know you are.

Anyway. As you can see by the photo that I will figure out how to attach to this post with hopefully a minimum of naughty words and computer-focused anger, I have been out and about dressed in glittery spandex. Why? Does one really need a reason? It was entirely justified I promise. I was at a 70's party being all sociable and stuff. I made four costumes in all. All of which are hopefully pictured here. Darrell and Rebbecca won the best men's and women's costume prizes respectively and I got the specially-made-up-on-the-spot-for-me best designer prize. Zang. The party definitely lived up to the aviators. Indeedy. T'was quite a party. As you can maybe see here.

A few weeks ago now I had my school sports day. My first few weeks at school were spent in obsessive preparation for this terrifyingly well coordinated event. The kids spent the better part of every day yelling their slogans, practising their dances, marching endlessly around the field, painting banners and making paper flowers. Sports day, you see, involves very little actual sport. I put some photos of what it does involve on the site. Particularly notice the scary saluting. This produced a physical reaction in me that is the exact opposite of the inexplicable joy I feel when hearing a large group of people singing.

Righty... some time has passed since I wrote that lot...
Now October has begun and the new JETs have been welcomed at Mt Sanbe in the customary manner. I am still very, very tired. I feel I need a bit of a weekend to recover from this last weekend. Friday we had a quiet wee indoor BBQ at Darrell's, of which I have posted some pictures, then Saturday we all dragged ourselves up a mountain (in motorised transportation) and partied the night away. Due to my playing RUGBY (mmm hm) for what felt like four or five hours during the afternoon, I was messy and in bed at the reasonable hour of oneish. So that brings y'all up to speed on my speedy social life.

I promised some insights into my school life (and intended to post some pictures of my house but it is awfully messy and so will have to wait). School is a completely different kettle of fish to last year. I am at the same school every day and so my lessons are not considered anything special (and certainly not "most very precious time for students") and the teachers don't put much planning into them, we just bumble on with the text book. It is difficult to get used to after being so involved in planning my classes last year and playing games and having routines to follow with the students (which should really be easier here but it is a bit of an uphill battle to even open the class in a consistent manner). BUT it is not all doom and gloom. There are definitely advantages to being at just the one school. I am getting to know the students which is excellent and rewarding in itself. There are some interesting characters and I have a couple of wee fans who show up in the staffroom every lunchtime. I also get to spend a lot more time with the kids who are training for speech competitions and am gaining a much more rounded view of Japanese school life in all it baffling glory.

If I don't put this up now I shall never get around to it. I hope everyone is well and good. It is lovely to hear from people so keep emailing!

Hamada lively

I have Internet at my house. It is terribly exciting. So exciting in fact that I am unable to realise it is truly real and keep checking my email on my cellphone.
I have been in Hamada for over a month now and I am slowly acclimatising - at least I am realising that I won't be going back to the island any time soon. I don't think I had any expectations for this place but it feels more different than I would have imagined. This doesn't seem like Japan to me. Being around people is also kind of tricky. You-all who do it every day don't appreciate just how skillful you really are. Yay for all those out there who socialise with ease. I don't think I am doing horribly, but I have become quite used to having time to prepare for each foray into the world of my English-speaking peers and space to ponder every aspect of the interactions after. I realise that this wasn't necessarily a healthy way to be and I will, in time, readjust to living a life unpondered, but in the meantime I fine myself doing a bit of part-time, as-I-go pondering which results in my looking alternately vacant and suspicious of those around me.
Anyway. I will take some pictures of my wee apartment for your viewing pleasure. It is substantially smaller than my previous one. It took me a while to settle in - mostly due to the fact that is was a beastly disgusting mess when I got there. I have never seen, nor suspected the existence of, such very large cockroaches. I have had fun building myself lots of lovely green shelving and decorating lampshades. I am now quite terrified of meeting my neighbours, nightly fun with a hammer is bound to make one unpopular. Perhaps I will construct some wooden treats for placating purposes.
That is quite enough. Next time I will try to provide more factual information. T'would be lovely to hear news from all and any of you,

Goings and comings and other such confusions

Goodness, how time does fly... and as most of you know, so did I.
It is a strange being here again after my trip home. I have to keep reminding myself that I actually did come home, it has been so easy to slip back into life here. Here feels like home too, and I'm moving in just over a week. Everything seems quite surreal at the moment. Like I have stepped sideways slightly from real life. School doesn't feel finished despite the farewells, my Oki-life doesn't seem to be winding down. It's the same as any other change. I never believe in it until a significant amount of time after it has happened. I still tell people I am 23 and then look confused at the sound of it which must make an odd impression.
It was lovely to see those of you that I saw when I was home. There wasn't time for much just being, most of it was spent catching-up. The catching up process feels like trying to get back to the level of understanding that allows one to just be. Very deep I am. But truly it was great to switch of the "heads, shoulders, knees and toes (knees and toes)" that has been playing on a loop in my head for months and talk to people who actually knew me. So yeah. Thanks all.
Today I saw the mayor for the goodbye talk. It was very like the hello talk, incomprehensible and hot. He talks like Animal from the Muppets.
Must go and keep cleaning my wee house. It is pretty clean really, what with me becoming obsessive about vacuuming and scrubbing the floors/bench/stovetop/etc. this past year. I wonder if my new love of shiny surfaces and order will survive a more active social life.
Next time I write here it will be from my new home (‘new home’ seems a bit of an oxymoron, it takes a bit more than setting up my sewing machine and a few sleeps to make it home – maybe I will shock the neighbours and have a flatwarming).
It feels strange to be homesick for New Zealand and nervous about Hamada and sadly about leaving Oki and ridiculously overheated all at once but that’s me just now. Thinking of you all much.

A prodigy of fear and portent

There is a snake in my gutter, in my dreams, and, in my dreams, in my shower. Most concerning. We saw him first on Saturday when he slithered out about thirty centimetres to have a look around, and I thought he was gone until I saw him again yesterday. There have been other strange animal behaviours, all very portentous, like the crows that have taken to congregating outside my house instead of down the road at the butchers, or the VERY large beetle that decided to take up residence in my shoe which I then put on. (Sudden flashback, I was seven and decided to ignore the 'stone' that had found its way into my shoe over night. About half an hour later I extracted a fairly mangled looking weta from the aforementioned shoe and felt terrible about it for days. This time around I reacted speedily, removing the shoe, shaking out the rather large beetle, yelping, and falling into a coat stand - all in one graceful movement that brought teachers running from the staffroom.) Nature seems to have gotten wind of my impending departure and decided... um... they like me here, really they do.
Sorry I have been so remiss in my attentions to this site but time is really moving far to quickly here. Such a short time ago it was months and months till I would be leaving Oki, then it was just months and now it is getting to the lasts - last visit at that primary school, last dinner with that group of people... next week will see my last times at three of my Junior High Schools! Woe is me.
Enough ranting.
What have I been doing for the last month or so?
In late May I went to the recontracting conference in Kobe. It was most bewildering. There were far too many foreign people for my liking and it took a while for me to figure out that that were all conversant in English. When this finally sunk in I took to ranting at people until they began smiling fixedly, nodding, and slowly backing away. Not quite the social triumph we had hoped for. I also met a classmate from Nelson Girls in the toilet queue at a Brazilian beef restaurant.
I have also been to a festival where drunken horses rampaged their way up to a shrine and hosted a 'New Zealand food' dinner.
Lovely.
I hope you are all well in your various ways and situations.
Also, I am playing soccer this Saturday and have been making an exhibition of myself every night for weeks huffing and puffing my way to the docks and back trying to get fit. Wish me luck.

Mosquitoes like sake

I meant to add more to the last entry but haven't got around to it. I think I'll just do detailed captions for all the photos and you can experience my family time like a good old fashioned slide-show.
So, back to talking about me. Just over a week after the family left was 'golden week' a run of public holidays that coincides with the first good weather of the year.
I went to Kyoto again to catch up with Sophie who I hadn't seen in 4 years. We stayed in an excellent we place called Kyoto Cheapest Inn that was only ￥900 a night (plus high season charge) and had an excellent time roaming the city and checking out various shops and shrines.
Her friend Simone (an Italian wine-maker) joined us on the second day there and one night Soph and I left our bags with him and decided to rough it and go camping. The original plan was to get out of town and do a hard-core hike, but the attractions of the city proved too strong and instead we spent the better part of the day lugging our packs around the shops and didn't head for the hills until late afternoon. Since it was too late to get anywhere wild and rugged, we went to the nearest hill we could find, nipping through a lovely shrine complex, we found a relatively secluded spot in the town belt and pitched our tent.
Although our site was completely out of sight and surrounded by nothing but trees, we soon found a parking area a few minutes walk away with a lookout and a man who sold sake. I blame the sake for making me ridiculously tasty to the hosts of mosquitoes in attendance. I still have little bite-scabs all over my legs.
I love Kyoto and I am glad that both my trips there have been somewhat shambolic so I still have so much to see (or re-see a more opportune time than on the way back from a night in the mountains.) I have many lovely moment-images, like sitting in the sunshine by the river with Japanese buskers (a very rare sight) busking in the background. Or running around in the rain to find some Japanese-style drinks and Simone making friends with an enthusiastic fellow when we finally found Tatami three floors above the river. Or when I found the three storey fabric shop… mmmmm lycra. So all in all it was lovely. Lovely to yarn with Soph and walk the nightingale floors, lovely to find a shop that sold me some foreigner-sized shoes, lovely to meet random Polish people in the Cheapest Inn kitchen and lovely to have so many holidays at once. Next week I am off to a conference in Kobe. Ahh my jet-setting lifestyle…

Extraordinary adventures

I had intended to spend today writing a brilliant travelogue of all the extraordinary adventures I had with my family. Unfortunately I am not feeling very up to being brilliant today so you’ll just have to take it as it comes. Today I am feeling grumpy and tired and achy, oh so achy, because yesterday a man hit my bike with his car. I am very fortunate that he did not hit me with his car, he only got the front wheel (which was impressively buckled) because I managed to brake a bit when I realised that he wasn’t going to stop pulling out of that driveway just because I happened to be biking past. He was terrifically shocked and apologised hundreds of times and got me a new wheel/mudguard/light and had my bike reassembled very quickly (too quickly for me to get any photographic evidence) I have bruised knees and various twisted bits and decided to purchase a helmet.
To the story… until last Monday I had family at my house. It was strange and wonderful and we used all the rooms at once, before that though there was travel and mishap by boat, bus, aeroplane, taxi, and several types of train.
A quick overview.
I met Miriam in Osaka on Friday the 14th where we shopped and walked quickly and it rained. On Sunday we went to Kyoto which was beautiful, delicious and peaceful. On Tuesday slow-bussed to Hiroshima where we met Mum and Dad and on Wednesday went on a morning-trip to Miajima to see monkeys who failed to show up (the monkeys have gone into the forest to find food, the monkeys will be here soon…) We rushed to Hamada on Wednesday afternoon so they could check out my from-July-home and on Thursday were kept from the island by six-metre swells and spent the day in Matsue. We got to Oki on Friday in time to watch a thousand year old dance and then made “New Zealand food” for a collection of island folk. On Saturday we vegetated (and I drove!) and on Sunday we toured the island.
Now you know where the lines are, I will colour in a few bits.

A badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...

Three days now until Miriam arrives and a week until we meet Mum and Dad. Definitely very exciting. I have purchased a larger teapot in their honour.
The day after I last wrote I did indeed go mushroom picking. Spring-time mushrooms (shidake) are grown on logs in shady wooded areas and there were a great many to be picked. It was a lovely afternoon though, perfect for wandering through the Japanese forest. I am very jealous of the basket-backpack that Yoshida-san had. I will try and invest in one for future foraging or going to the vege-market if I move back to Welly. Next month we will go collecting the "child of bamboo" while it is still young and tender.
I ate mushrooms every day for a week in an attempt to use up what wouldn't fit in the freezer, mushroom soup, fried mushrooms, baked mushrooms, mushrooms and rice... then salvation from my mushroom diet came in the form of 5 fellow English-teacher types coming to visit Oki for a stitch'n'bitch. I made them meat and mushroom pies that were rather light on meat...
It was nice to have more visitors and we did the essential Oki tour - the ￥100 shop, the 'mall' and the liquor store - and stitched away the grey afternoon.
Apart from that I have pretty much just been hanging at the office everyday and rewatching movies every evening. I am not sleeping terribly well so it is nice not to be in the classroom. I have a whole two days of school before I take off for the family tour!
An odd thing. On Saturday the sky was a funny shade of brown. Apparently this is a phenomenon called kosa which means Yellow Sand. It is dust from the desert in China blown over to Japan but strong spring winds. Although it has been common in spring for centuries it is getting more intense as the desert in China expands through environmental mismanagement. It was like living in sepia.

Marching on...

Three weeks today until Miriam arrives! Exciting times.
Not a lot is going on with me just now. It is spring holidays so I am at the office every day. 8 hours is a long time to have no work to do but I seem to be filling it without resorting to keeping up to date with my Japanese course. School starts again the week after next and today all the leaving teachers are coming into the office and bowing a lot. I try to keep up with the bobbing but always manage to miss a few or interpret someone looking down as wrongly and do one extra...
Recent events.
The Vagina Monologues went really well. I think we raised about NZ$900 for the women's shelter which was good and there is a group of Japanese women who are interested in doing it next year which is exciting. I was much more nervous than I thought I would be but I managed to get through my bit okay. I can't get to the photo album on the web from these computers but I'll put some up when I get back to school.
The Chinese CIR who works in my office and lives upstairs left on Tuesday. It was very sad. I am sure I will be just as much of a mess when I leave. She came over for (really odd looking) cake on Sunday and we exchanged email addresses. It will be hard to keep in touch in my crappy Japanese though. I will try! Would be good to have a friend in Beijing.
Tomorrow I am going mushroom picking but otherwise I'm having a quiet time of it. Plenty of time to get my house in order for the family visit (yay!).

When where what?

Just a quick note to clear up some confusion. When I said I was moving to Hamada this year I meant when my new contract starts this year in July. July 25th to be exact. I'm on the island until then. I must say I appreciate the place much more knowing I'll never see another Spring here, another winter (yay oh so yay) another graduation etc. So I won't be readdressing or nuffink until after then!
One thing I will miss about this place is the random innundations of produce. When it rains it certainally does pour! First it was squid, then radishes and now we are in the month of the mushroom. Last week three sources gave me them by the bagful and I have been chowing down on the fungus day and night.
That's all.

The Visitation

Sorry I have been terribly remiss in my writing. More than a whole entire month! I have wrangled some computer time to write a happy birthday email to my brother and am now abusing the privilege.
What have I been doing so secretly?
I had a visitor! and not just any visitor, I had Pam to visit. She is the first homeperson who has seen my funny little world. She didn't get to see much of it though cos it snowed lots and we had to go to school both days that she was here. She was terribly confusing for the poor students. They just couldn't seem to get their heads around the fact that she is a Kiwi with Indian parents who was born in Mozambique. They are still talking about her.
Pam and I also built a lovely snowman (and woman) together, much to the amusement of my students who were walking home past my house. I guess we must have been a sight in the thick snow, alternately doubled over with laughter and crawling around making snow-body-parts. I developed an excellent method I dubbed the hug and roll. You make a wee snow-ball and then hug it downwards to collect the underneath snow. I'll post pictures next time I'm at the BOE.
It was soooo lovely to have someone to talk to who I knew. My wee house seemed terribly lonely when she left and she was only here for four days.
Fortunately I went to a Prom that weekend which prevented my sitting at home and brooding. The Prom was fun. It was 50's themed so I made a 50's dress. I forgot to take the appropriate bra with me and had a terrifying experience buying one. I was still pulling up the straps when a woman came into the dressing room, said "chotto mate" (just a moment) pulled on some white gloves and started ah, rearranging things. It was deeply odd and apparently I had things positioned all wrong. I wasn't keen for more of the same so I bought the bra and left. It made me so busty I kept a cardy on all prom.
Um... what else?
I taught my kids to say arse last week. Inadvertently. I was high on sugary coffee and no breakfast (damn 7:30 taxi) and I snickered when student after student read:
"I'm standing on the moon. I see stars all around. I also see the arse. It's shining over the horizon just like a ball. The arse is blue and white and beautiful..."
It got worse when they started reading about mother earth. I know, I know, I have sunk so low, but really I think someone needs to tell them what not to say. Otherwise they will end up like the poor woman on TV who made the classic Japanese 'L' 'R' mix-up when saying how surprised she was by the prime minister's election. Apparently many people were surprised by the election. Oh dear.
This weekend I am off to Matsue again to participate in the Vagina Monologues. The theme for the V-day campaign (which raises money for victims of domestic violence) is comfort women. This puts us JETs in a rather uncomfortable position as we are not allowed to make political statements (it's a condition of our job and therefore our visa). I haven't said anything about it to my superiors and we are not performing the actual comfort women monologue, so I am sure it will all turn out okay. It's pretty challenging stuff for this country as it is. For those who have seen it I am doing part of "I was twelve, my mother slapped me" (the period one) and "The Vagina Workshop".
I'll let you know how it goes down.
Loves to all.
Keep in touch!
Happy Birthday Mark.

More for Me

It is signed and faxed and final. I will be staying in Japan for the next 17 months. I don't like the look of that number. Let's say for another year, another home and a new adventure. Last Thursday night when I tried to turn over my paper with the "will not recontract" option circled I was such a mess (and my supervisor was so worried about how she was to explain this turn of events to the good people in Hamada) that an extra few days was negotiated for me to think over my decision. I think it may have been the extreme coffee drinking that went on on Friday to get me through school, but somehow I decided to change my mind again again again, and stay and go to Hamada.

The teachers at the school I was at got the idea that my spending another year on Oki was still a possibility (the English teacher told them I was deciding to explain my jittery confusion and strange aversion to the sound of the telephone) and two of them told me they thought I was tender. Had visions of self trussed up and slowly spit-roasting.

Thank you muchly to people who offered opinions and stuff. I know and knew I had to decide by myself but it is really hard to argue it out with oneself. I end up placating both of me and telling all involved that everything will work out fine and why don't we just have some chocolate and a nice spoonful of peanut butter.

I will be home for Christmas this year though. Am looking forward already. It is hard to feel festive when cold has deprived you of feeling of any kind in your extremities.

In other exciting news I will have Pam visiting from tonight. I am sure she would be quite terrified if she knew how much I am looking forward to seeing her (although that hasn't translated into the flurry of cleaning I had planned for the weekend, I spent most of the time sitting. Sitting and feeling dazed and reading the Dompost from January 24th - thanks Lisa!)

Happy Waitangi day also. I hope you are all basking in something somewhere and celebrating as you see fit.

Cabin fever

Well. Time seems to be passing rather quickly at the moment as time does before essays, during holidays and while playing civilisation. I have until Friday (2 days) to decide if I am going to do a second year in Japan. I went and visited the place I got the transfer to last weekend hoping that it would help me in my decision but unfortunately it hasn't. It is a nice place I am just not sure if Japan is the way for me. Next year will be another new set of people and expectations and students but without the novely factor. The point of the move is supposed to be that I will have some friends. Oh oh lonesome me.

Hmmm. In an attempt to make myself more decisive I have stopped sleeping and begun eating only peanut butter and chocolate and rice crackers. Unfortunately this has made my brain about as fast and gruntled as a guinea-pig swimming in porridge. I don't know if you have ever tried consulting a breakfast encrusted rodent on any matters of importance but I'll tell you it is no fun for either party. I just have this horrible feeling that making this decision is going to be a bit like trying to bite my elbow. Frustrating in the attempt and ultimately impossible.

I feel like a possum caught in the headlights of an approaching vehicle but instead of doing the decent thing and squishing me I just know it is going to stop and ask directions.

I know that it really doesn't matter what I do, that either decision is fine fine fine but that is probably the most discomforting thought of all - that really my year is not worth so much y'know? I'd like it to have some empirical value.

Enough rant. If, dear reader, you have any suggestions, rational or irrational, considered or cute, trite or trying, please, please give them to me. I have spent too many months alone with my thoughts and we have cabin fever.

Harppy Barssday

Hey all, thanks for all the Happy Birthday emails - I am terribly shocking at remembering birthday dates and end up feeling guilty for a week or so around an estimated date. This of course means I spend most of the year with a vague guilty feeling... so sorry if I forgot yours, you have no idea how I suffer, such tremblings, such flutterings all over me such spasms in my side, and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that I get no rest by night or by day... hmmm I may send out one of those birthday calendar things.

It was a nice birthday. The kids at school played a Harppy Barssday song on the intercom for me. Sadly also the anniversary of the Kobe earthquake which killed over 6000 people and I was constantly reminded of this.
Liz took me out to dinner at a wee place that makes dinner sets (a compartmentalised box with many tiny dishes) in a place that I always thought was just a house and then we watched Alexander which I wouldn't if I was you, and drank some Jackson's Creek wine. I even made cake which worked surprisingly well with the funny flour. Nice.

I had my first real yucky bout of homesickness last week. Maybe because I've been here long enough for my surroundings to seem totally familiar, I just had that weird ache where you want something truly, properly, really, familiar y'know? Maybe it is just the weather getting me down but I would have given anything to smell some warm sun screen or run down a hill into the Wellington wind or hear someone quote The Castle in daily conversation... maybe it has just been too long since my last hug. Ay me. At least I have chocolate. And too many socks. And movies starring Colin Firth. Any my crocheted tree. And my sanity.

Planes, trains and everything else

Happy New Year all!
I hope you had times that were smashing and splendid wherever you were and whatever you did. I was at the oldest shrine in Japan listening to a gong gonging and being cold and sober. Then I ate hot chips and mushy rice balls with bean paste. As you do. There were many scary ladies in highest heels and mini-skirts. They looked cold.

The day after I wrote last I was to catch the boat to the mainland and from Matsue take and night bus to Tokyo. 10 hours on a bus, then fly fly away. BUT it was not to be. For once the problem was not island-ish. We could have gotten off the island fine but the Matuse-Tokyo bus had been cancelled. So I ended up spending about $400 (more than my ticket to Korea) flying from the island to Osaka, busing from Osaka airport to the train station, bullet training to Tokyo, staying overnight in Tokyo and training to Narita airport in the morning. PPPFFFWWWA

Sooo by the time I arrived in Seoul on Christmas Eve I was feeling all travelled out. Fortunately the pane was on time and my friend Rachel and her mum Raylene were there to meet me at the airport.

The best thing about Korea has to be the heated floors. The are glorious. All countries without chairs ought to heat their floors. I swear I wouldn't have so much trouble getting out of bed in the morning if the floor (and everything else) wasn't so damn cold. Granted, I'd probably start just rolling out of bed and lying on the floor for extended periods, but maybe I wouldn't feel so guilty about staying in bed...

Christmas day was definitely one of my odder Christmases. After a quick chat with the family in NZ and devouring about half of the chocolate my sister sent me, I met the others and we set off across Seoul in search of bubble show. We had missed the early session so we had a much needed lunch before the afternoon session. The bubble show was um... a bubble show. Fun, odd and um bubbly.

Most of the rest of the time was spent shopping and shopping. I went to the biggest fabric market in Asia which was just plain silly. There was so very much of everything and few double-ups of anything. It is difficult to believe that that many fabrics exist let alone come together in 3 five-storey warehouse-sized buildings... I spent a lot.

The food... Koreans are obsessed with leaving food till it goes bad and then making it super spicy to disguise the weird taste. This I believe is the origin of kimchi, the rancid spicy cabbage that is the local speciality. I tried it. Once. I don't really dislike spicy food but it really truly dislikes me so after a few uncomfortable days I tried to stick to the blandest stuff I could find. It was all really cheap though and there was some good stuff. I especially liked the-middle-of-the-table BBQ and the breakfast sushi.

After a day of fast shopping where I spent far too much on a set of grinning pigs and a rather gormless wooden duck, I caught up with Simon in the western area. Korea is so much easier to get around than Japan! Everyone seemed to have a bit of English which was nice. I felt like an evil tourist though, expecting everyone to English at me. I could just be the country/city split though. Anyway, we went to a Chinese restaurant where I accidentally ordered something cold grrrr and then to a local for a few drinks. T'was nice and I ran into Rachel and Raylene on the train home (the last apparently).

I managed to fall asleep at the airport and woke up at boarding time still needing to go through customs and immigration. I just just made the plane, I was thundering along the horizontal escalator things when they were doing the 'all passengers should now be on board' calls, but I got there and back to Shimane without incident.

I hope everyone is rested and recovered from their adventure. Please do email me and keep in touch. Winter is long cold and a silly time to have the Christmas holidays.