You can always get cuter....

I think that no matter how long you spend in Japan, you never get fully inured to the cuteness that purveys the country so intensely. I've been here for 7 months, and teach the little tinkers everyday including at the moment when they're all wearing little Halloween costumes. But still today, I was bowled over with cuteness. Going through the subway barried were about 30 little kids, probably about 5 years old, all wearing matching school uniforms and in pairs, holding hands. As they went past the guys on the barrier collecting tickets, they said in unison "arigato gozaimashita!" in incredibly perky little voices. Then, just when it seemed the cuteness was reaching a peak, two of them gave little salutes to the barrier guys as they said thank you! KAWAIIII!!!

Nara, giant Buddhas, and violent deers...

I've been very slack with my updates recently so apologies if you've been awaiting the next thrilling instalment of the nonsense I've been up to. The most interesting thing of late is my friend Catherine visiting - while she was here, we visited Nara together, which is a fairly rural part of Japan with a famous Daibutsu, or giant Buddha (but only the second largest in Japan - Kamakura has the largest, giant Buddha fact fans).

Many many photos of Nara can be found here

Part 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=63550&l=2f8a5&id=697195509

Part 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=63552&l=bfc51&id=697195509

- the Daibutus itself is inside a gigantic temple, and it's pretty impressive but because everything in the temple is huge too, all the photographs I took make it look a bit titchy. Annoying.

The most memorable part of the trip was probably the deer though. Nara has about 1000 sacred deer wandering about, and they have absolutely no fear of anyone. They wander into traffic, and come right up to people to try and get food. Actually you can buy deer food at vendors, and they've obviously learnt that because they hang around near them. I bought some and a nearby buck immediately came up to me and started affectionately rubbing his head on leg to get some. It took a little time to get the wrapper off, and during this time the rubbing got more insisted, and started to become butting. Then when I tried to feed another deer instead, he butted me HARD in the leg. And then again! The little bastard! I was halfway between being a little scared and monumentally pissed off - they actually remove their antlers so it's not quite as bad as it could be, but those stumps are pretty solid. I was pretty glad when I'd got rid of the last of my deer biscuits I can tell you.

Anyway, I'll try and be more regular with my updates from now on - it's Halloween lessons coming up so they'll be costumes galore including mine which I bought the other day......

Expect the unexpected...

After 7 months in Japan, you start to fall into a routine with your kids lessons - you know pretty much what you're kids will like and understand, and what will have them looking perplexed and on the verge of rebellion. But there's still a few surprises that can grab you.

For example today, my classroom is on the 1st floor of the school in Tajimi, and the kids went up ahead of me while I got some stuff together. When I joined them, I noticed the - what's the polite term? - more errant child in the class had gone in the classroom, shut the door, and was holding it closed with his feeble child strength. Kazumi - helpful and friendly staff member - was playing along with him and pretending that she couldn't get in, but she doesn't know the kid quite as well as I do, and before I could say "actually, he might lock the door in a second"....well, guess what happened?

Entreaties to open the door were met with a grin and a shake of the head, so in the end I had to lean through the window next to the door (which luckily was ajar) and unlock the door.
Crisis averted! If that window hadn't been open, I don't know what would have happened - possibly I'd have had to shoulder barge down the door?! Which would have been more fun than singing the ABC Song, but probably wouldn't look to good on my reference.

Not content with one spanner in my well oiled English teaching machine, once the lesson started I noticed a spider climbing up the wall. Not a biggy, but a pretty ugly looking brute which I wasn't keen to get near. Once the kids noticed it they were entranced, and I was deeply deeply concerned that they might get frightened by it which would mean I'd have to touch it with my actual hands to get ride of it. But, after freaking me out for a bit, it buggered of into a crack in the wall. Phew.

I'd also like to mention that I'm feeling a bit smug today because this same class had a craft activity today where the kids were meant to cut out some shapes from coloured paper and glue them together to make a picture of a house. Now, these kids are lovely little mites, but they can't cut out FOR SHIT. Previous lessons involving the use of scissors have seen a flurry of confetti blanket the floor as they shear off bits of the paper, seemingly at random. So today before the lesson I cut out all the bits beforehand, meaning they only had to glue them onto a piece of A4. One of them still managed to cover the opposite side of the paper with prittstick and almost adhere it to the table, but overall they made some nice little houses which I was very pleased with. Hurrah.

Things I learnt this week....

1. Jiggering your leg up and down in a distracted way is considered rather rude in Japan
Especially if you're eating, apparently. To put it in the words of the lady who told me "it means you have NO MANNERS!!"

2. If you have bags trailing behind you when you go through a subway barrier, it thinks someone's trying to sneak through without paying the fare, and the barrier slams shut
unintentionally tried and tested twice. TWICE.

3. Burma is also called Myanmar
Is this an international thing? Or just in Japan? I've never had cause to pay much attention it before.

4. There are some bloody massive spiders in Japan
Honestly, they could take your head off with one swing of their mighty spider-legs. Probably.

Mount Fuji....

There are two sayings in Japan about climbing Mount Fuji. One says, "you're a fool if you don't climb Fuji, but you're a fool if you climb it more than once". The other says "Fuji is for looking, not for climbing". Combine this with the numerous Japanese people that looked at me as if I was mad when I told then I was going to climb up Japan's biggest mound of dirt, and the numerous articles written by previous climbers who said what a miserable, miserable experience it was and frankly I was feeling a little jittery about making the run. But climbing season was coming to and end, my friends from England were here and raring to go, so basically it was unavoidable.

Mount Fuji has 10 climbing stations, with 1 at the bottom and 10 at the top. Usually you start from station 5 halfway up, and climb from there. Me, Jackie, Jen, and Sinead arrived there at around 4pm on Thursday after a fun cab ride with a very jolly guy who could speak no English. I think he was giving me lots of interesting information and tips about the climb, but really for most of the time I was just nodding my head and say "so so so so". We began out ascent full of cheer and laughter, and it wasn't long before we got to the 6th station, where we had a quick drink, then we carried on up. At this point we started to notice that no one else seemed to be going UP, just down. Then a few of the people descending started asking us what we planned do to when we got near the top. We said that we were going to stay in one of the huts up there, and then head off to the top to catch sunrise. First problem: all the huts were shut! When the first person told us, we shrugged them off, but then a couple more people said the same thing, and finally a very concerned looking guy bounded up the mountain to tell us that everything was DEFINITELY shut. So, slightly deflated we went back down to the 6th station, and decided to try and sleep till midnight and set off then.

Sleeping proved very difficult, mainly because it was about 8pm, but also because we all kept giggling. I haven't been to a sleepover for a while, but it made me want to have one again - if we'd had a video player and a copy of Mannequin it would have been my childhood all over again.

So at midnight, we set off AGAIN. Trudging up the mountain was fairly tiring, but not too debilitating, and the night view as we looked back at Fujinomiya was pretty breathtaking (although it defied any attempts to photograph it - damn scenery). Altitude sickness if one of things that stops most people from getting to the top, so we took our time and went fairly slowly. Weatherwise, we were pretty lucky - although it was cold, it wasn't unbearable and climbing kept us nice and warm.

Things started to get a little more tricky when we got to around the 7th or 8th station. Although we were all tired, Jackie seemed to be getting noticeably more fatigued than the rest of us, and when I offered her a Snickers bar to reengergise her and she seemed to tired to put it in her mouth, alarm bells started to ring. We tried to press on up to the summit, but it became obvious after a while that she's got a nasty case of altitude sickness and that she wasn't going to make it to the top. So in the end she and I stayed at 9th station while Jen and Sinead pressed on to meet the sunrise at 5:30am. I went on afterwards to check out the summit too - it's not too exciting once the sun's risen to be honest! There was fog everywhere, so you couldn't see much, and it was pretty windy and chilly. But we were all chuffed that we'd made it, and the view as we looked down, although cloudy, was pretty cool.

Then we started out descent which was MUCH more tiring and painful than I expected. My knees were groaning as we neared the bottom, and Jen and I also had to deal with a soul-sapping error: we though we were coming to the 6th station (and were thus almost home), but then realised it was actually the 7th (and that home was another hour away). But by this time we felt like veterans, and pressed on, showing true British pluck :)

Once we got back to the 5th station, we hauled ourselves into the cab (the same driver - he seemed very amused by the whole thing) and headed for home, absolutely exhausted. It may make me a fool, but I'd certainly like to climb it again, although not in the next couple of years. Since getting back, I've suddenly been inundated with useful information about the climb (where was this BEFORE we went?!): which routes are best to go up and down etc. Furthermore, I think going slap bang in the middle of climbing season when all the huts are open so you can rest for a few hours would be a good idea - going up and down without stopping (a 10 hour hike basically) was knackering. But I'm glad I did it, and can happily tick it off my list of things to do in Japan. Next........pufferfish sashimi!

(Pretty pictures of the whole endeavour can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54966&l=e726f&id=697195509 )

Funky Japanese arcade...

In the news recently there were reports than an arm wrestling game in some Japanese arcades had broken three people's arms (that's three separate people -not one person with three arms). So when Thom said he'd found a similar machine in a nearby arcade, OF COURSE we had to go and try it out.

Here's the machine, looking innocent:

And here's me, choosing my opponent. On the screen you can see the selection of racial and sexual stereotypes than comprise the potential foes you can battle. My favourite was the black guy with the enormous red lips - I think it might be where Herge got his ideas for Tin-Tin.


Despite bracing myself to hear a snap in my humerus, the machine was actually pretty weak - me and Thom both completed it with little strain. So what I suspect actually happened was a Japanese salaryman fell over whilst peeping into a girls' purikura photo both, but needed a better excuse to give his wife when he rang her from casualty.

Sally (Thom's girlfriend) also had a go on this train simulator:
It's difficult to gauge her success - on the one hand, her punctuality was second to none; however, this was mainly because she didn't stop at any stations and just powered through while the little simulated Japanese commuters shook their tiny fists. Still better than Virgin Trains though (satire).

Thom also had a go on this boxing game where as well as smacking the hell out of your opponents, you also sometimes had to dodge. Sadly, the menacing looking thing at head height didn't shoot out and smack you if you didn't, your character onscreen just got a punching.

Birthday!!

On September the 5th, I celebrated my 28th Birthday - cue everyone under 28 saying "wow, you're really old now" and everyone over 28 saying "ah, but you're not 30 yet at least". On my actually Birthday, I was working so I celebrated properly the following night with some food and karaoke (of course).

The local karaoke place charges a single fee if you go after 11, however long you stay up until 6am, so that's the one we normally go for. This only includes one drink though, and as ordering drinks via telephone can be a little hit and miss in these places, not to mention s-l-o-w, we always take in our own from the local convenience store. I think technically you're not meant to do this, but they don't seem to enforce this rule to rigidly. In fact, at one point late in the night one of the staff came in to check how many people were left and there were cans and bottle all over the place. I was going to try and surreptitiously cover some of them up, but with the amount of drinking debris on show this would just have patronised the guy's intelligence - it looked like a recycling plant. He didn't say anything about it anyway (or if he did, it was in Japanese an thus I could safely plead ignorance).

Gradually the numbers thinned out until the just a hardcore four of us were left at 5am - we stopped in the end because our tracheas were starting to close up and making our renditions even more torturous than normal. I finally got to bed at 6:30, after some food at a nearby 24 hour place. Not bad for an old guy :)

Some photos of the night can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=53219&l=ed5d5&id=697195509

Also, thanks very much to everyone who wished me happy Birthday, it was very much appreciated! It always feels a bit funny to be away from home for special occasions, and nothings more special than my bloody Birthday so little messages from people back home always give me a warm and fuzzy :)