It was a sunny day today, but the wind has been howling since last night, shuddering the apartment, rattling the balcony door and making the overhead lamp rock gently with the biggest gusts. The wind is driving eastward from Lake Shinji, hammering all the new flowers – the familiar daffodils, dandelions, a few daisies, and some pretty pink and orange flowers that I didn’t recognize - that seemed to pop up yesterday to enjoy the record-breaking warm temperatures for March 4^th in Japan. I went for a run this morning, but found running into the wind a little hard to take. Crossing the oldest bridge, I found the water below me choppy and roiling. Small boats bobbed helplessly on the churning lake. I ended up popping into a number of shops along the way for a little breather. I visited some cool little clothing boutiques, a jewellery store specializing in local stones and a tea shop run by two friendly middle-aged ladies where the air was bittersweet with the smell of traditional Japanese tea.

I passed a specialty store selling clothing and weapons for kendo, a martial art using wooden swords that resembles fencing, sort of. I looked at it longingly, but the signs were in Japanese, and the more traditional the store, the less likely it is that I will encounter English, so I didn’t go in. I’m curious about kendo, but I’m told the required gear (dark blue tunic and flowing pants, torso and arm armour, face mask, weapons, et cetera) can cost around $800, so I’ll just have to wait and admire from a distance.

It’s now been three months since I got here, and I think I’m over the worst part of adapting to a new country, job, language, et cetera. My early frustration with learning Japanese has ebbed, as I remind myself to be patient. I’ve been told learning Japanese has its plateaus, and I think I’ve passed my first. At work, I’ve also felt myself fitting more comfortably into the teaching part of my job, finding a rhythm and gaining some confidence in the classroom.

Last weekend, I laid low and took the weekend easy while I recovered from my cold. The only thing I did was go to Rando, a yakitori restaurant, with Seiji on Monday night. We sat at the long counter, diner-style, separated from the charcoal grill by a pane of glass. The yakitori chef, wearing a blue tunic and a tightly rolled red bandanna across his broad forehead, dipped skewers of vegetables and meat into a sticky-looking soy-based sauce and cooked them on the grill with a skill (and scarred knuckles) gained from years of experience. The place began to fill with people, mostly business people in suits escaping a long day at the office. The air grew smoky, but the atmosphere was convivial. Our salad bowls were constantly replenished with strips of cabbage in a light vinegary dressing. The food was good, very hot and fresh. We tried many different things.

On Tuesday I had another Area Teachers’ Meeting in Yonago, to talk about interview techniques. I thought it was at noon, and got there an hour early, so I went to prowl a nearby department store, buy some chocolates for our office (each of my co-workers has a sweet tooth, and candy is always appreciated) and have some coffee in a quiet coffee shop. The meeting was all right; we practiced interviewing each other and pretending to be low-level students. I’ve got to say I’m not looking forward to this part of the job; all I want to do is teach. But I’ll try to do my best. (Tomorrow I have to get up at 6am, so that I can distribute AEON pamphlets at a local high school with Ryoko and Mayumi; not thrilled about that either…)

We have a new full-time teacher, starting next week. Her name is Taeko, and I like her a lot. She’s very blunt and direct, especially for a Japanese woman; I think she scared Masako, one of the part-time teachers, when they talked on the phone. She has excellent English, and apparently studied in Prague for two years when she was younger, shunning the more traditional travel abroad to America or Australia many of her peers opted for. She’s moving here from Yonago soon.

The week was lovely, with great weather (except, of course, for the only day I had to cycle between the Shimadae branch office and Ekimae branch office, when it rained – oh, damp misery!). I went to Nihonglish at Kaya on Friday night. It was an international crowd; I met Henrie from Malawi, who is studying Hydrology at Shimane University (Shimadae) and his friend Thulany, who teaches English in the JET program. Henrie was explaining at some length in his high-pitched voice what Hydrology was and what it wasn’t. I also met Alexei and Rustad from Russia and Binyam (spelling could be hopelessly wrong on many of these names) from Ethiopia, all celebrating Alexei’s acceptance into the PhD program in Geology. And the JET teachers arrived in a rush. There are in fact two JET teachers named Marie, both from Ireland, both with gorgeous Irish accents. Blonde Marie, whom I hadn’t met before, set off on a rant about hina dolls when Girls’ Day was mentioned. March 3 is Girls’ Day in Japan, and small, delicate, white-faced dolls, called hina dolls, are displayed in homes and stores everywhere all month. What’s the matter with that, you may ask? Well, Marie has a phobia of dolls, as well as masks and puppets. She shudders at the thought of them. Seiji was giving cotton candy and sembai (traditional crackers) to all the women who came in, in honour of Girls’ Day. (Boys’ Day is in May; they fly red kites shaped like carp to celebrate).

Valentine’s Day has passed, but in Japan they created a new holiday here called White Day. On Valentine’s Day (Feb.14), men give gifts of chocolate to women, and on White Day (Mar.14), women give chocolate to men. Not necessarily just boyfriends or husbands either; any man in their lives. I think this is a very clever ploy created by the candy stores…

On Saturday night, I raced through the mist to the budokan for aikido class on my bike. I missed it last week, so I was glad to make it this week. It was a small class. I struggled to improve my technique; it’s so hard when I can come so rarely; once a week, if that, is not enough. Our sensei, Akai-sensei, has a technique so smooth that it hard to focus on individual movements so I can learn from them. I have to concentrate very hard to see what he is doing. I still don’t understand most of what he is saying. (Pat in aikido class in Halifax has said they will pick my brain for differences when I come back; there are small differences, like in shomen-uchi, a form of attack, but I need more time in class to learn more.) Sato-san told me at the end of class that the sensei is moving to Nagoya in May, and Asuka-san, one of the girls I went out to dinner with two weeks ago, is going to move to Okayama in April for work. He said it was a big transformation for the class. I wonder what will happen…

The bike ride home from aikido was very beautiful. I took my time and followed the road beside the largest canal, feeling the rough cobblestones beneath my wheels. It was a misty, warm night and the lights of the shops and restaurants glowed hazily, reflected in the water. It was around 9pm and people were drifting along the streets in pairs and small groups.

…I can hear a loudspeaker out on the streets as the wind dies down, and I wonder with a sense of dread if it is the vans I have seen a handful of times since New Year’s. Some political parties go out, especially on holidays, and make speeches to attract attention. Most seem harmless, but the black vans, strident tones and militia-like garb of the right-wing nationalists take on menacingly Fascist overtones. I’ve been told they have ties to yakuza-like gangs, and not to attract their attention by staring. They were a real shock the first time I came across them, a reminder that all is not peaceful and friendly in this country. The nationalists remember a time when Japan was a proud, imperialist state, and seem to want a return to that. I don’t know how they feel about foreigners; probably a little hostile, I would guess, so I try to avoid them…

Yesterday, I went to see the afternoon bunraku performance at the Shimane Prefectural Hall with Seiji, who had never been before (it’s amazing how many Japanese have no direct experience with their culture, but I guess it’s the same at home…). Bunraku is traditional Japanese puppetry, and I was very curious. The stage was hidden by a huge tapestry curtain with a purple fringe, depicting flowers like chrysanthemums in bright splashes of colour. On the right of the stage was a wooden platform with a paper screen. I quickly read the English summary of the story in the programme (if I had not, I admit I wouldn’t have understood much of what I was watching). Before the performance, a singer/reciter in a gray kimono and black hakama came out and spoke to the audience (apparently he was very funny…). The middle-aged woman next to me took the opportunity for a pre-show nap. Bunraku is almost exclusively performed in Tokyo now, but this company tours different parts of Japan each year; this year it was Shimane Prefecture’s turn. It’s been at least ten years since bunraku was last seen in Matsue. The art is about two hundred and fifty years old, and the stories are modelled on the plots of kabuki and noh dramas and farces. The touring company had 48 performers! They were all men, many of them related; like kabuki, bunraku is a family business. When the singer finished talking (about the company, I think, and about the stories we were going to see), a young shamisen player (32 years old and single, he said to shouts of laughter; he was cute, too!) came out and demonstrated some playing techniques and made jokes to warm up the crowd. After he bowed and retired, an older puppeteer came out, dressed all in black, with the scowling, fierce head of a male puppet. He demonstrated how he could operate the facial features of the puppet with one hand. Then two more black-clad puppeteers came out with the limp figure of an exquisite female puppet, beautifully dressed in kimono with an elaborate hairstyle. She was about four feet tall. Each main character puppet is operated by three puppeteers; One operates the head and left hand, one operates the right hand and one operates the legs or skirt (female puppets usually don’t have legs, except in comedies). As they took their places around this puppet, she came to life! Even from our far-off seats in the balcony, it was pretty amazing. The older puppeteer continued to demonstrate how the puppet was operated, lifting her sleeve to reveal his hand. The puppet daintily lifted her skirt to reveal the fist of the puppeteer making her “legs” move. There was a slightly off-colour joke here, I think.

Then the show began. The curtain lifted to reveal the interior of a schoolroom with young students running around and the lady of the house in purple kimono. Most of the puppeteers, except for the ones operating the heads of the main characters, wore large black hoods shaped like papal hats; it took some getting used to, to see these executioner-type figures grouped around the puppets. One puppeteer, separate from the rest, announced the names of the reciter and the shamisen player (a different one from the cute one), who were revealed on the platform to the right. The barrel-chested reciter spoke all the lines in a singsong style, shifting tone depending on the character. I was immediately impressed by his vocal ability. He shifted from the stylised, diffident tones of the woman to the thunderous growl of the headmaster and the high-pitched voice of the children beautifully. The story was almost two hours long and they had three different reciters and shamisen players, pausing to announce the change each time. The last one was the most amazing; he had the job of communicating a lot of emotion as the characters express their grief at what has happened. The story was complicated, but in a nutshell it was about a man and his wife who give their young son to be executed in the place of a lord’s son to settle an old family debt and keep their family honour. The father has to look at the head of his son and say that it is the head of the other boy. The outpouring of grief at the end by the man and woman who have lost their son is operatic in scale. At intermission, I was impressed, baffled and charmed.

The second story, shorter and much easier to understand, was called “Fishing for Wives”. It was about a bachelor warlord and his buffoonish retainer who go to a shrine to pray for wives. They receive a magic fishing rod, and go fishing for brides. The warlord finds a beautiful bride, but the silly retainer receives an ugly bride who pursues him.

I left the theatre with a headache from trying to understand Japanese for three hours.

In the evening, I went to the “English Chat Club” at the Matsue International Community Centre. There was a huge spread of food, and lots of people to meet. I met Rob, who is with AEON’s sister company Amity, which teaches children. He’s a huge, easy-going black guy with glasses from Memphis, and he knows two of my advanced students, who teach at Amity. Really nice guy. Also Dan, who helped organize the event, and Mayumi (another Mayumi; now I know about eight women named Mayumi in Japan). It was a nice event, but I was pretty tired, so did my rounds and said good-bye early.

Next weekend, I’m meeting Melanie, my fellow teacher at AEON, and two of her friends, and doing the tour of Matsue with them. We’re going to take the horikawa sightseeing boats around the castle. And at the end of March and the beginning of April, hanami starts. This is when the cherry blossoms bloom in Japan, and parties are arranged for people to go to see the beautiful blooms and have big picnics where they eat and drink a lot. The park around the castle is the place to go here, and I’m looking forward to it!