Careful girls…. March 28, 2007

Ok, so sad story tonight…. A girl that works for my company / school (education is a business…. but that’s another post) was murdered a few days ago. She didn’t work at the online-teaching center where I do, she worked at a small branch near Tokyo. She was giving a private student a lesson in his apartment. Ladies, what did your mother tell you? Don’t talk to strangers and don’t go into strange men’s apartments. It’s really scary because a lot of people I know that have private students do similar things.

Personally, I would never do it. I love teaching online because A) you have all these great technological tools that are only available in the richest universities and B) there are lots of crazies out there. Stalking is a big problem in Japan. Many of you know that I have first hand experience of this from the last time I lived here. Some teachers have even had students follow them back to their home country on vacation. There’s this guy who went home to New Zealand for a week and a student followed. After I teach I get to log-off from my students and don’t have to worry about it. But never-the-less, a little common sense can keep you from going home in a body bag.

 So, I love my job, was slightly freaked out by this girl’s murder – she went through the same recruitment office as me, got interviewed by the same people and arrived in Japan a month before I did – but am still totally in love with this country. After all, murder like this happens a few time a year in Japan and everyday in the UK and USA. Life is life, don’t let the media freak you out because they’re covering the same damn thing over and over again!

Yay! March 28, 2007

Am so excited, my friend Chuts is coming to visit and she gets here tomorrow!!!! She is officially my first guest and she’ll be here for cherry blossom viewing. My apartment is soooo small, we will literally be crawling over each other. I’m currently looking for a new apartment, something a little bigger and more comfortable because I think I’m going to be here for a while. I’m working on getting my photos up online somewhere, so as soon as I will let you know. There are simply too many for the blog to handle.

Am going to Vietnam in a few weeks for 5 days. It’s not nearly long enough but don’t have any vacation days yet (need to be at company for 6 months before they kick in). The way my office works, is that there are 700 teachers, about 300 of which are English teachers, and you can swap your days off with other English teachers (because we all have different days off, I’m off on Wednesday & Thursday). So you work a couple of 6 day weeks, then bam you have 5 days off without touching your vacation time.  It’s super. Flying into Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon), spending 2 days there, then 2 and a half days at a beach resort before flying home. Am sooooooo looking forward to eating tons of Vietnamese food.

I love sumo! March 26, 2007

So, sumo was totally awesome. There’s like 4 minutes when the sumos lift their legs up, throw salt in the ring and squat in position waiting for the perfect moment to start, but if neither sumo feels ‘in the moment’ they walk away and start over again. They take a sip of holy water, spit it out, use a towel to wash their face and wipe their armpits,  lift legs, throw salt in ring, then enter and squat again. This is repeated until they are ‘in the moment’ then the first sumo out of the ring or on the ground loses. Once the match starts it typically lasts 30 seconds, but the really good ones get up to around 3 minutes.

 The ‘diaper’ is called a mowashi and is just a piece of cloth wrapped round and round and tied tightly in back. Your opponent often tries to get you out of the ring by lifting you up my your mowashi and pushing you out. Wedgie!  

Sumo March 20, 2007

I’m going to see sumo tomorrow. I am so excited!!!!! Fat men in diapers….. so hot! I will report back on the fat man love.

Miyajima March 15, 2007 March 20, 2007

My second day in Hiroshima wasn’t really in Hiroshima. I went to Miyajima (jima means island) because there is a really famous shrine there – Itsukushima. It was raining, which wasn’t really ideal. I took a train about 20 minutes outside of Hiroshima to get Miyajima-guchi. About 5 minutes from the station was the ferry dock. The ferry runs every 20 min and takes 10 min to get to the island. The island is very beautiful, mountains and lots of forest. As the ferry approached I saw the famous Toshii gate. It’s one of the most photographed images in Japan. Basically the gate is the entrance to the shrine and the shrine is built above water. At low tide you can walk up to the gate and at high tide the gate is surrounded by the sea and the shrine appears to be floating in the water. It was really beautiful. I felt really lucky because I was able to see it at low and high tide. Anway, as the day was rainy it was also very foggy, which only added to the mystical feel of the place. Miyajima, incidentally, has the world’s largest rice scooper. Seriously. It’s like the size of a small house. I walked around the island, frolicked with the deer (there are hundreds of tame deer that come up to you), ate tempura udon, visited the 5 story pagoda, and went to the shrine. All in all it was a really lovely afternoon. Miyajima is by far the most beautiful thing I have done in Japan. I will definitely go back. There are hotels on the island, so next time I think I’ll stay and go hiking, there are tons of trails in the forest that lead to all the different shrines (there are about 30 on the island, but I only went to Itsukushima). Anyway, for folks thinking of coming to Japan this is the most beautiful place I’ve experienced.

Hiroshima Day 1 – March 14, 2007 March 16, 2007

Up bright and early today, my first vacation since starting my first job – i.e. the first one I’ve completely paid for. It’s a solo outing, there’s something very peaceful and rewarding about travelling on your own. I am very excited to be travelling by Shinkansen (the bullet train) this morning. I arrive at Shin-Osaka Eki (station) at 7:30, a full hour before my train. After scoping out the station, I settle on a quick breakfast and coffee at MacDonald’s (thank god for globalization!) I make my way to the platform about 25 minutes before the train is due. The train arrives at 8:30 and departs at exactly 8:32. I love how the train track man (no idea what they’re called) stands on the platform with his white gloves, waving each train in and out.  

Settled in my window seat, I sit back for a blissful hour and a half of Japanese countryside accompanied by Fiona Apple and Leonard Cohen, what a great way to start a trip! A little less then an hour and a half later, we pull into Hiroshima Eki at 9:52. The precision of the Japanese train system kicks the shit out of anything I’ve ridden anywhere else. The trains are never late, arrive to the minute when they are supposed to, and are so fast. It would have taken me a day to drive to Hiroshima from Osaka, or an hour to fly,

Shinkansen is the easiest way to travel. It is much easier then flying because you just show up. How much easier would travelling be in Europe if there were Shinkansens? You wouldn’t need all those cheap-polluting flights. Anyway, if you’re listening – bullet trains as efficient as in Japan for the rest of the world would be fantastic! 

A short cab ride later and I arrive at the Ana Hotel (5 star, if you gotta travel by yourself it’s nice to do it in style). I have a lovely room on the ladies floor. In Japan there are ladies floors at many hotels. You use your key card to access the floor from the elevator, no penises allowed through! The idea is that men are loud, gross perverts. My room is at the end of the hall over-looking thePeace Park (yay!). I can’t see the A-Bomb Dome from my room because there’s a damn building in the way. Grrrr.  

Head out to the Peace Park, stop by The Gates of Peace. The Gates of Peace stand at the entrance to the Peace Park. They are 10 glass arches with the word ‘peace’ inscribed in 49 languages all over them. Then I head into theHiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I was surprised at how not anti-American the museum was. There is a real focus on peace, highlighting the Japanese atrocities of WW II in great detail. Whilst it doesn’t say that the Japanese should have been bombed, it does strongly point out how the Japanese army attacked the US first and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians during the war throughout South East Asia.  

I was prepared to see all the pictures of the total destruction of the city, the mushroom cloud, etc…. I wasn’t prepared to see the pictures of the people and the effects of radiation on humans. The images of people trying to walk around after the bomb dropped with their skin hanging off of their bodies like sheets, their eyes bloody, and skin burned was just so intense. There were the artefacts preserved from that day, the pottery fused together with brick, sand, and rocks in an instant and the sand turned to glass by the sheer heat of the bomb was very unreal to see. It was like before I saw all the artefacts it wasn’t very real, it was like a movie, but seeing them really brought things to reality.  

Then I went to the Cenotaph for A-Bomb Victims, which kind of reminds me of the Washington monument because it has a really long pool behind it and a giant flame of peace. Next up was the Children’s Peace Monument, dedicated to a little girl that 10 years after the bomb was dropped developed Leukaemia and made 100’s of paper cranes to show how much she wanted to live. She died before reaching her goal of 1,000 but her class mates finished them for her. Now schools from all over send paper cranes and there are thousands displayed in an ever-growing number of glass cases around the monument.  

I wandered over to the A-Bomb Dome across the river. The bomb exploded just above the building and the remains are preserved exactly as they were on that day. All I can say is that it is truly disturbing to see the force of an atomic bomb on a huge building.  

After a long and somber morning, I decided to head to Okonomi-mura for lunch. Hiroshima has a special type of Okonomiyaki from Osaka (see Christmas post for details). Basically, theHiroshima kind has noodles in it and less egg. Okonomi-Mura is a building where over 3 floors there are 30 places to have okonomiyaki. You can wander around and choose which one looks best, each place does it slightly differently. The one I went to put the noodles directly inside the Okonomiyaki. It was definitely the best one I have ever had, better than Osakan Okonomiyaki.     After lunch it was time for Hiroshima Castle. The original was destroyed in the blast, but it has been rebuilt. It is a really beautiful castle and a few nice shrines on the grounds. Throughout the area there are trees that survived the bombing, most of these have little signs on them saying so.  Last tourist stop for the day was Shukkein, which is a lovely Japanese garden. There were a few cherry blossoms out (warm spring, global warming…. Fill in appropriate environmental rant here). Again, the garden was destroyed in the bombing but was rebuilt after. The garden itself is around 1500 yeas old and composed of ‘shrunken views’, which is the idea that you can take a small greenspace and miniaturize everything to make it seem much larger by giving the viewer lots of different scenery. Truly beautiful.  

I went back to my hotel and collapsed. Took a long nap, then headed out to try Nobu Sushi (not related to any of the posh Nobu places, the guy’s name is Nobu). It was hands down the best sushi I’ve ever had. I dropped $40 on a lot of sushi, but so good! Nobu lived in California for 20 years and spoke perfect English. The sushi he made was a combination of California style rolls with traditional nigri sushi. Words can’t even describe how fresh and amazing it all tasted. After eating and chatting with Nobu I headed back to the hotel. The end of day 1 of my Hiroshima adventure.

Hiroshima March 12, 2007

Hi all, been busy bee…. working….. drinking…… working…. drinking. Fun times. Anyway, I’m going to Hiroshima this weekend. I’m really excited for my first trip since I’ve been to Japan. I could really use the break. The thing that I really don’t like about Osaka, is that there are no parks/ trees/ greenspaces. It’s all concrete and steel. That’s the one thing that Tokyo has going for it -  tons of parks. So I’m spending a day exploring Hiroshima – Peace Park, A-Bomb Dome, etc…. then I’m going to Miyajima. Miyajima is a little island off the coast of Hiroshima and it has one of the most famous shrines in Japan. Two world heritage sites in one weekend, it’s super exciting!!!!  Lots of parks and green stuff, should be very relaxing. It takes an hour and a half by Shinkansen (bullet train) to get from Osaka to Hiroshima. If you drive from Osaka to Hiroshima it takes 8-10 hours, depending on traffic. I love the Japanese train system. You can take a slower train which is cheaper, but I really wanted to make the most of my weekend and Shinkansens are SO much fun! Will post about wknd when I get back, hopefully a bit refreshed

Ume viewing March 2, 2007

Yesterday, I went plum tree blossom viewing at a shrine. Plum trees (‘ume’ means plum) are the first sign that spring is coming in Japan. They bloom in mid-February and finish by the first week in March. They are not as famous as the Cherry Blossom but really very beautiful. They are usually cultivated, shown in planters inside a shrine. They resemble large bonsai trees. The flowers are small and range from white to dark pink. I think that the dark pink ones are the most beautiful. A few kinds have been cultivated so that the branches weep downwards with flowers at the end…. so pretty. Also, the horticulturist takes shoots from the various trees and arranges it a huge moss-covered earthen mound with bamboo and sand at the bottom representing a beach. It’s really quite breathtaking. After viewing the plum blossom, we stayed at the temple and there was a reading of a traditional Japanese story. A little tedious at an hour, but I could make out some of the story… there was a girl’s hair….. god…. and they got married and had 4 children. After the story reading was done, it was dark and they lit up the temple with candles, mini-bonfiress, and trained spotlights on some of the trees. Most of the trees were inside but there were a few outside. The thing that stood out the most (aside from their beauty) was their smell. Plum trees have a really sweet and strong fragrance. My hayfever is paying for it big time today It was a truly amazing experience. I’m really glad I went yesterday because the trees are starting to lose their flowers already, it should be finished by next week.