Hello to
all! I hope you are enjoying the advent of summer. It is evening here in Matsue,
the end of a lazy day off for me. I tried to sleep in this morning, but the
bright sunlight pried my eyelids open before 10. I lay about for a while before
finally rolling out of bed – easy to do when my futon is so close to the floor
- and began my day. I managed to do
very little until mid-afternoon, fiddling about on the computer and drinking
lots of coffee before I finally dragged myself outside for a bike ride. It was
perfect weather for it, not too hot, not too cold, with a soft breeze. I stopped
at Uni-Qlo to look at the yukatas on sale. Yukatas are summer
kimonos, made of light material and often brightly coloured these days, which I
hear is not traditional. The traditional colours for yukata are indigo
and white, dyed with indigo from local plants. I think I want to buy one, and at
4,000 yen (or about 35 dollars Canadian) they’re a much better bargain than
kimonos, which will cost you around 2,500 dollars Canadian. I admired a black
yukata with a red, pink and white rabbit pattern on it and a beautiful
red one, but today was not the day for buying, so I got back on Mama-Chari and
hit the road again. Mama-Chari, by the way, is the other bike Neal left me,
besides the mountain bike (there was a third, but I gave it to Seiji and he
promptly crashed it, leaving the basket a tangled mess…). The type of bike is
called a mama-chari (think “mother’s chariot”), and is ideal for sedate
shopping excursions. Mine has a basket, and high handles, and a little bell for
dinging. I like her a lot, although she has two problems. One is that, unlike
the mountain bike, she has terrible shock absorbers, so going over curbs is a
jarring experience. The other is that the brakes squeal terribly when I want to
stop, making a noise kind of like a cross between a braying donkey and a
high-pitched whale’s call. So she is emphatically not built for
speed.
I
stopped at the bank, then wheeled lazily down to the lake, admiring the water
for a while before crossing Shinjiko-ohashi, the bridge at the mouth of the
river. I stopped near the statue of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi (“Hoichi the Earless”) to
say hello before going to the castle again. I parked Mama-Chari with a long row
of other bicycles and went for a walk through the park beneath the castle. At
the moat I stopped to count the turtles – about twenty-four today, but last week
I counted thirty. They linger in the easternmost corner of the moat, where the
afternoon sun shines the longest. I think from their behaviour that someone must
come to that point to feed them, for they started to cluster hopefully in the
water below me in large numbers. I think some must be babies, they’re so small.
All are covered with mud and dull-coloured, except for streaks of red and yellow
on their heads and necks. After looking down to see turtles, I craned my
neck up to watch the herons flying overhead, slow and majestic. They nest
at the top of the trees surrounding the castle, and can be seen in large numbers
there. The other week I watched one catch a fish after long patient waiting; its
body tensed, and its neck curved sharply into an ‘s’ shape, then it darted
forward, plunging its beak into the water and emerging with a wriggling silver
shape. They often line the canals and lake’s edge, waiting for prey, barely
sparing a glance for a curious Canadian pausing to watch.
I wandered up to the castle,
finding a new pathway up that I hadn’t taken before behind the castle and taking
the worn stone steps carefully – they’re a little uneven – as I took pictures of
the stone walls around me. Often I stop to lie on the grass under the castle
walls, but I didn’t pause long today. There were armies of workmen tending the
castle grounds, so I wonder if there is a festival here next weekend. It’s
difficult to keep count of the festivals and events. I finally saw people
cutting grass with whipper-snippers; it struck me last week that I hadn’t heard
or seen a single lawnmower in Japan. But then, not many people have lawns. One
of my students, Masafumi, when I asked him about it, said he cut the grass
himself, and made a sweeping movement with his hands, which led me to believe he
uses something like a scythe to cut his small lawn. Interesting.
I rode
back home through the Karakoro tourist district with its traditional shops and
cobbled streets, and paused to say hello to Luke (a lanky Texan) and Bud (a
broad-shouldered, quiet guy who’s taking a handful of martial arts here,
including aikido), both teachers in high schools through the JET program, whom I
met at Kaya. They were tossing a football back and forth near the canal,
enjoying the warm afternoon. But I kept going – I was pretty tired – and made my
way home, where I enjoyed a beer and some edamame whilst indulging my
Facebook habit. (If you haven’t had edamame, you really should try it.
It’s probably available in the frozen foods section of many Western supermarkets
these days. You boil soybean pods
in salted water for a short time, then pop them out of their pods and eat them
like peas. Better for you than peanuts, and very
satisfying…)
This has
been a really rough week. I’ve been tired every day, unable to get up in the
morning and exhausted at night. There’s no real reason for it, but I think after
signing my contract I got kind of depressed. Also I only had one day off last
week, because I had to work on Sunday (I did a successful interview). I’ve been
doing lots of counselling practice with the managers and Mayumi-sensei, getting
lots of feedback, and doing some counselling and interviews (not a lot, yet, but
some – I’m pretty good at it, actually…). Right now I’m still tired,
after two days off. Friday was almost unbearable, starting with an hour of
handing out flyers, then a business meeting where I was taken to task for
accidentally speaking Japanese in front of some students, then more counselling
practice before my first two private lessons. Taeko had a rough week, too; she
and I were both cranky on Friday – I was very, very quiet, which is how
you can usually tell my mood is bad, and Taeko was snappish. Then I missed
aikido on Saturday because I had an interview at the end of the day and had to
scramble to prepare my classes for next week. I dragged myself home and, despite
my hopes of finding a second wind, had to take a pass on going to Argo for the
‘80’s party Cleve had planned. I was all set to put on my best Cyndi Lauper
imitation, but I didn’t have enough oomph to get out the door, let alone let
loose to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”.
It sounded like fun, too; Cleve had to close at midnight, and the
remaining revellers went to Kaya, so Seiji told me all about it. I was
apparently missed, which was nice to hear.
Tomorrow
I’m travelling down south to Okayama for a Professional Development Meeting,
which sounds interesting. I’ll meet a LOT of AEON teachers tomorrow; about half
of all the teachers in AEON West Japan will be there. Taeko and I are going down
together. I guess usually there’s a party after the meeting, but I’m going to
try to be virtuous and catch the train back to Matsue early (yeah, right). I was
hoping to see ‘Awesome’ Josh Gautreau, but he’s going to the meeting the day
after me. I might see him in the evening, though. It’ll be a nice change of
pace.
A couple
of weeks ago, I went to the first big party at ARGO. Cleve had removed the
merchandise and brought in some local DJs to play, and the place was busy. I got
there at 10:30 or so and hit the dance floor. There were a lot of people I knew
there, and Seiji came after he had closed Kaya. It was a fun party, with great
atmosphere, and it was still going strong at 2am, when the police showed up. I
guess they had stopped by earlier to check it out and chat amiably with the
people in the smoking area in front of the bar. Well, they came back with four
cars and nine officers. They were worried about the noise, I guess, although
ARGO is not in a residential area; it is directly under the train tracks and
beside SATY, surrounded by stores and warehouses. They took one look at us and
labelled it a ‘gaijin’ party, although plenty of Japanese partygoers were there
as well. Although the music was shut down, people loitered for about half an
hour as Cleve and a handful of his closest friends spoke intensely with the
officer in charge. Then the police took Cleve away, and Yumi, his
friend/employee, closed the bar and shooed us all away. We were all troubled,
and Seiji said he had never seen anything like in his years of owning a bar. We
all wondered if it was because Cleve was a foreigner. And to top it off, while
we were standing there speculating, Cat, a JET teacher from Australia,
discovered her bike – no, check that, her roommate’s bike – had been stolen from
the SATY parking lot (possibly while nine police officers stood on the other
side of the building). So the evening ended on a confused, sour
note.
I
checked in on Cleve the next day. He was cleaning up at ARGO, and said the cops
held him until 5:30 while they did checkups on his passport, visa and business
license, and tried to get him to sign a statement in Japanese, which he couldn’t
read, which he refused to sign. He was still pretty
upset.
That
evening I went with Seiji, Aki and Junko and Kei and Yukiko to Chochin-ya, the
yakiniku restaurant run by Seiji’s mother. Chochin-ya roughly translates
as ‘the shop of the lantern’, and Seiji’s mother has owned it for about twenty
years. It is a traditional restaurant, the sort where you have to remove your
shoes and kneel on low indigo and white cushions. Yakiniku means
something like ‘grilled meat’ – an apt description. Shortly after we had all sat
down and ordered large, foaming beers, Seiji’s mum – a small, round-faced woman
– brought a brazier of hot coals to the table and set it in the centre. Then,
she brought us the appetizers Seiji had ordered; two dishes of raw liver, cut
into bite-sized chunks, with a dipping sauce of sesame oil and grated garlic.
Well, I’ll tell you – raw liver is better than cooked liver. I set to with
gusto. Then came a plate of uncooked tongue, slices of which Seiji set on the
brazier to cook, using his chopsticks with experienced ease. Likewise, choice
slices of pork and beef came to the table to be cooked and consumed in their
turn, and generous servings of spicy kimchee (Korean, not Japanese, but
very popular here), washed down with beer. Wow! I was so full by the end of the
meal! As we prepared to leave, I chatted in my little Japanese with Seiji’s mum.
I’m the first foreign woman Seiji has dated, and throughout the meal I had
noticed her sneaking looks at me from near the kitchen. She was very impressed
that I ate the liver, expressed surprise at how short I was, and, much to
Seiji’s embarrassment, complimented me on my teeth. I also met Seiji’s brother,
a stocky guy like Seiji, but with Elvis hair.
(The
liver wasn’t the strangest thing I ate that week; that prize goes to the main
course I found in my bento box at lunch one day. Just imagine big, pinkish,
tough, chewy rings of tentacle with a little, removable needle of cartilage
inside and you’ve got the mental image. I had to ask Mayumi-sensei what it was.
“Squid,” she said, with a little giggle. I ate it, and convinced myself that it
must be very healthy,)
After
leaving Chochin-ya, we all trouped down the street to cheer up Cleve. He was
sitting alone behind the counter at his place, looking very sorry for himself,
but our arrival cheered him up a lot. We stayed and drank and chatted for a
couple of hours, and had a great time.
Mimi
observed my lessons at the end of May. Mimi was one of my trainers in Okayama
when I first got here, and she’s really nice. She watched a group lesson and a
grammar lesson, practiced interviewing and counselling at the request of
Mayumi-sensei and talked to me privately about my experiences at work and in
Japan so far. It was nice to see her, and even though the classes she watched
weren’t the best I had taught (to be blunt, I felt they sucked), she said I was
doing really well and only had a few suggestions on improvement. It was great.
Anyhow,
I’m tired and there’s a lot to do before bedtime, so I can catch my early train
to Okayama. I’ll let you know how the meeting went soon. Love to
everybody!
Sarah
P.S.
Folks
who want to see the pages that I grace in WINK! Magazine can view the scanned
images (courtesy of Pogo Blackmer, a family friend) at: