23-25 September: Three day week, three day weekend

On Friday, Japan treated us to another public holiday, this time to celebrate the “autumnal equinox day”. Eiko-san, the lady who owns a small language school in Shimoori where I teach on Wednesdays, took me, Mashu-san and Henry-san on a day trip to Saga Prefecture. Together with one of her friends and two of her students, we piled into a mini bus and drove along the coast to a beach in Saga Prefecture, near Karatsu. We had lunch in a restaurant/shack, whilst our food was just hanging out by the window:

We had a very odd-looking creature for lunch, called something like turbine shell. I can't say it was the best thing I've ever eaten, but maybe I was just a little put off by its very––how shall I put it?––unappetising appearance. The second course was squid, which was very tasty.

 The view from where we sat was quite lovely!

After lunch, we went to a little under water viewing platform, where we found lots and lots of fugu (blowfish), who didn't look poisonous at all, but really quite sweet. We also saw some tai, which look very oishii (delicious)!

fugu

tai

We had a quick look at the sea, where we found a bright red octopus just swimming about in the shallow water! Unfortunately, the little tako escaped before I could take a picture. We also found a sea anemone (I think), which looked pretty gross, and lots of limpets, hermit crabs and seaweed.

The next stop was karatsushiro, the castle near Karatsu. Haruka-san, Eiko-san's friend, decided that I would be the princess, Mashu-san my samurai and Henry-san my ninja. I found this a pretty decent arrangement.

Vending machines everywhere! And don't I look cool with my hat? It was given to us by the chancellor of the university.

 

This young lady here thinks she is the princess, but of course I know better.

View from the mountain! Looks just like Germany...with rice paddies and beautiful beaches and mountains near the sea...

Our group minus Henry-san

The last stop of the tour took us to our local onsen in Tenpaizan, my first proper onsen trip! It was good fun, although I should've really remember the modesty flannel. Oh well.

As we got back to Cambridge House, the others were getting ready to go to karaoke in Futsukaichi, and so we spontaneously decided to come along. We stayed for hours admiring the beauty of the karaoke bar's amateur music videos (see below) and the wonderful machine that you can use to order your drinks; who needs to talk to a real waiter after all?

We spent Saturday learning kanji in our "library", which is essentially a room with a couple of tables, dated computers and a few leftover books form previous Tsuzuki scholars. We discovered the incredibly helpful "Remembering the Kanji" by James Heisig, which teaches kanji in such a wonderful way that even I can remember the kanji for gall bladder.

On Sunday, we were invited to a party hosted by Naoya, a retired physiotherapist who is super keen on hanging out with foreigners and having international parties. It was all pretty mad; he had come up with some sort of programme for the afternoon: we listened to one of his friends singing some Japanese songs, then we had to sing some English songs, which was mildly embarrassing. Then, the girls had to learn a hula dance from two Japanese ladies and dance that in front of everyone, which was fairly embarrassing, very amusing, and a little infuriating, because neither of us was very keen to dance for the boys, the boys included. Then, Sara-san, Maddie-san and me got to try on a kimono, which was pretty damn cool. Naoya's friends who helped us put on the kimono were lovely. I can't say I'd be able to put one on myself, because it's so much work, and so much material seems to go into it: as the women took off the material round our middle, we counted 5 ribbons, two belts and one plastic thing, as well as the parcel at the back.

Kimono, complete with parcel and all

Grahame-san as a samurai

18 September 2011: Material girl

I did it. I went to a karaoke bar. My total inability to sing has led to many mimed happy birthday songs and, being the kind person I am, I stayed away from karaoke to save others around me from the horror of my voice...until Sunday night.

And it all started so well. On Sunday morning, we got ready to go to Linden Hall primary school for their open day. Granted, to spend a Sunday at school doesn’t sound great, but Linden Hall kids are sweet, the school is nice, plus we were promised o-bento for lunch. Unfortunately, there was no bus to pick us up from Cambridge House, so we had to make our way to the train station. By the time we had walked from the train station in Futsukaichi to Linden Hall, in smart clothes and with a felt 101% humidity, we didn’t look so great anymore. Lunch lacked the desired o-bento, and instead we were served some sort of sloppy, gooey soup, topped with a white creamy substance and a lightly poached and mostly raw egg on the side. We were told to drop the egg into the soup, which, stupidly, I did, even though I hate runny eggs almost as much as a jar full of buttons. Or coriander on my curry.

We had expected to just stand around for an hour, show our gaijin faces and smile at parents, then hop on the next train to have at least three cold showers before the end of the day. Instead, we had to follow around a group of kids from Linden Hall and some prospective pupils on a sort of treasure hunt. Part of the treasure hunt led to the “forest”, the adventure playground that belongs to the school. For some incredibly stupid reason I didn’t douse myself in anti mosquito spray (which, by the way, is aptly called mushi mushi bye bye spray; mushy means insect; German readers might find it entertaining on another level). As soon as I entered the playground, my legs started itching. At the end of the day, I counted more than 25 mosquito bites. I have since given up wearing anything that shows my legs and am now wearing jeans every day.

When our job at Linden Hall was done, we went home to get changed (it was digger dress time!), and then met the teachers of the Linden Hall senior school at Bali Bali, a really mad and wonderful restaurant in Futsukaichi. The all-you-can-drink dinner was paid for by the school, and so we decided to practice our vocabularies––“Ume-shu hitotsu kudasai!” (one glass of plum wine please), which, as it came closer to the closing time, became a “Ume-shu yott-su kudasai” (four glasses please). Thankfully, we hadn’t learned how to count further than four.

After God know how many ume-shu, singing a couple of songs suddenly seemed like a brilliant idea, even to me. And that’s how we ended up at a fairly run-down looking karaoke bar somewhere in Futsukaichi, where we paid for a dingy room and had to order our drinks by phone. All in all, a suitable place to lose my karaoke virginity, singing (screaming) “Material girl” with (at) Sara. Many songs followed, many photos were taken, until my camera died at around 2 am. I think it was for the best. Here is some wonderful evidence to prove that it really did happen:

P.S.: Here's a video I made of the shinto ceremony:

http://youtu.be/VRt-N5fkWTk

Watashi wa gakusei desu!

My word, learning Japanese is a lot of work! This week, I’ve learned how to count in Japanese, how to write all hiragana and most katakana kana, how to introduce myself to someone in Japanese, how to order food... three hours a day is a lot of work! And it takes at least another two hours every day to review what I’ve learned and practice writing. Suddenly, I sympathise a lot more with my language school students when I’m trying to cram “This is an apple!” into their tiny little heads and they stare back with blank faces.

I’ve also started work at Linden Hall elementary school this week. I’m working on Monday and Friday, and this week it’s been really quite fun. The school is beautiful and we are allowed and encouraged to use their art room material and gym. On Friday, we played “shops” and the kids thought it was the best thing ever. Granted, it did end up with Dom and me on the tills shouting for security and police and little hands grabbing for the money, but that just added a touch of historical re-enactment, what with the London “riots” and all.

I have also started teaching at a small English school, and the owner as well as the kids are wonderful people. She wants to take me and four other students who teach there on a trip, so that should be nice. I taught a six year old girl who found it hilarious that an upside down 6 becomes a 9, and a group of children who were very cute and very very noisy.

On Thursday, we went to a festival in Hakozaki. The festival was held at the Hakozaki-gu, the shinto shrine in Hakazaki. The shrine and the ceremony that was being held inside were very beautiful, although I can’t say I understand how shinto works just yet. A long road leading away from the temple was busy with people queuing for the many food stalls. I had some octopus balls––balls filled with bits of octopus, rather than the octopus’ balls, as I keep reiterating––and it was actually quite nice. I also had some frozen pineapple on a stick and a hot mochi-like thing filled with red bean paste (that stuff is just unavoidable). Laurie somehow won a turtle when playing one of the fishing games. It made us all very sad, how the little thing was trapped in the tiny tank and struggling to keep its head out of the water, so he returned it and got some pens instead. Slightly frightening to know that that’s the value of a turtle.

Another day of this week was wasted on a slightly more boring undertaking. We popped into the local Fukuoka Bank branch to finally get a bank account, and after we had  wasted the entire morning trying to get rid of our cash, we were told that the manager thought it best to wait for our gaijin cards. By that, of course, he meant that we should get the hell out of there and only come back with official documents. The gaijin card is taking its sweet time, though, and without the card and the bank account, we can’t get a phone. This leads to all sorts of problems; today (Saturday), I went into Tenjin to meet a student, but we missed each other. This almost ruined my day––it’s still really hot and a journey to Tenjin still comes with buckets full of sweat––but I found an entire floor of vintage clothes in the Tenjin Core mall (I hope you read this, Bloomy), which cheered me up a great deal. I bought some amazing stuff, including a yellow dress that I can only describe as a sailormoon outfit, and a really quite wonderful little rucksack. I feel suitably Japanese now. You might also be pleased to read that I have now finally tried all the options that the public toilets offer. I can only recommend the “bidet” function.

This is where I bought my octopus dinner...

And this is me re-considering my choice of meal

Laurie and the turtle, which we named, in fond memory, ‘How Bigdoesitget’.

The changing room of the vintage store. Really rather wonderful.

10 September 2011 Quick dinner, Japanese style

Yesterday, I made my first experiences on my own, without the usual bubble of 9 other foreigners. I took to train to Tenjin with Sara, where I met up with a friend of a friend, who has lived in Fukuoka for over two years now. He gave us a little tour of what seemed the “cool” end of town, Daimyo (I have no idea if this is how you spell it...). As I had my first meeting with a student at 3pm, I said good-bye to both of them at Tenjin station and made my lonely way to the IMS building. Which is across the road. So far, being on my own in Fukuoka wasn’t too difficult.

In the lobby of the IMS building, I met Mari. Her English is incredible, so I have no idea how I could possibly help her. We had a coffee together and talked about her time in Germany, where she had lived for 6 years (which is why I picked her as a student; it’s worth picking interesting students after all!). She showed me an outlet bookstore with amazing Japanese fashion magazine, cooking books and travel guides, as well as a great department store called Loft, full of fancy electronic gadgets, amazing lunchboxes, and other fun things.

Then, Mari took me to take a purikura. Purikura is the most fun, but also scariest Japanese cultural experience. It’s essentially a photo booth. The difference is that you don’t go there to take passport photos, but incredibly saccharine self portraits that whiten your skin, accentuate your eyes, add in a pink background with hearts and other girly things and jenglish slogans like “she is a fantastic dancer and she eats takeout on china”. Once you’ve taken a load of pictures, you can go to a machine and add even more hearts, bubbles and pictures of cute animals. All of this takes place in a room with incredibly loud music. There was not a single lonely boy in the room; the only two males I saw were with their girlfriends. The rest of the crowd, with an average age of 14, was dollying up in special dressing rooms or admiring their purikura pictures with bunnies, flowers, slogans...and some tiny white heads sticking out of the pink explosion.

I said good-bye to Mari, but I had another three others to waste until I was going to meet my next student. At first, I wandered around the expensive boutiques and the pet shop with live dogs and cats in glass cages, but both were fairly depressing. I decided it was time to eat, but didn’t quite know how to go about getting some food. I had seen one food shop, but I was told it is incredibly rude to eat whilst walking, and as there were no seats inside the shop or out front, I decided to find a little food stall in one of the department stores or train stations. When I got there, however, I realised that my complete lack of Japanese, and my ignorance of the cultural particularities of “eating out”, I was pretty much lost. I waited and watched a little while, and finally walked into a shop with particularly appetising wax models. The menu––surprise surprise––was in Japanese, but there were also pictures of the dishes. I pointed at my prospective dinner, smiled, and hoped for the best. Five minutes later, a steaming version of my desired food stood in front of me: deep fried prawns with miso, pickles, salad and––of course––rice. Thankfully, the meal came with the bill, so all I had to do was walk to the counter and pay up. I felt pretty damn good about myself.

I met my next student, Shiho, at the IMS tower at 9pm. We went to a Starbucks (they have macha Frappuchino’s here!!) in Tenjin station and had a little chat about her German lessons. This is going to be exciting, my first German student! As I said good-bye to Shiho and hopped onto the first train to Asakuragaido (I’d like to pretend I can read the massive board that tells you where to get which train, but I have to be honest: all trains go to Asakuragaido. All I can check on the board is the platform and time from which the first train is departing, and whether it is a slow, normal or fast train), I felt pretty good about my first day alone in the big city. 

8 September 2011: Tenjin!

Yesterday, we ventured into Tenjin for the first time, with all expenses paid for by the university, which was very kind, and also pretty sweet. Tenjin and Hakata are the two largest train stations in the Fukuoka city centre, but Tenjin is meant to be more exciting for general money spending, whereas Hakata has connecting trains to other big cities in Japan (or something like that; I’ve not yet been to Hakata). We had a look at the IMS building with the Rainbow Plaza on the 8th floor. Rainbow Plaza is a hotspot for foreigners who are looking for jobs, maps, or Japanese friends (apparently people offer “homestays” there). But the IMS building also looks pretty cool with its swish elevator and indoor tree including tree house and stained glass window.

After the IMS building, with its wonderfully refreshing air-con––I almost felt as if I needed a cardigan, oh the very idea!––we went back into the heat. And my word, it was hot. And this is what they call autumn! Walking along the Hakata river we put on our second layer of sweat, which evaporated once again thanks to the air-con in Canal City (the orange building; what a lovely and dated futuristic vision). And what did I find in Canal City, as my clammy T-shirt finally detached itself from my back? A Moomin cafe, a Studio Ghibli themed shop, and bubble tea! Visitors to the Moomin cafe can actually share a table with Moomin Papa. This way, even really sad people who go there on their own (I count myself in here) don’t sit on their own! Oh what a wonderful world!

Having said my sad good-byes to Moomin and promised to come back soon, we set off to have some lunch at a snug little Indian restaurant. The owner, an Indian man who has lived in Fukuoka for over 30 now, almost fell off his chair as he saw us walking in, because (in his words) “the English love their curry” and he figured he had just gained 11 regular customers. After telling us that Japanese lessons are pointless and that the only way to learn Japanese is to get a Japanese girlfriend (the Japanese waitress, clearly his wife, was rolling her eyes in the background), we went on our way to visit the Fukuoka Art Museum. The museum is located somewhere in the middle of a massive city park, the Ohori Park, which, in true and orderly Japanese tradition, has designated running, walking and cycling paths. As I was almost dying, dragging every weeping pore to the nearest bit of shade, some jolly Japanese runners bounced along the running path.

The Fukuoka Art Museum had some pretty impressive names to show––Miro, Dali, Lichtenstein, and many others––as well as a little exhibition seemingly run by some Japanese ladies, who were ushering me from one gaudy picture to another. As I didn’t mind any excuse to avoid a return to the oven outside, I spent a polite 2.5 seconds looking at each painting.

Just as the sun had reached its nice and toasty midday heat, we went on a long, long walk to the beach. Our tour guide said that this was an okay beach, but compared to Brighton (even when it’s not raining...so never) it’s really very nice. Although the sandy beach is artificial (in fact, the entire bit of land we had been walking on for the last half hour is artificial), it looks really rather nice from the top of Fukuoka Tower.

Sara and I as funky Fukuoka towers

For dinner, we met Kim-sensei, who works in the international office, Ikahara-sensei, our Japanese teacher, and some other, really important man whose name I’ve sadly forgotten, and who could probably sue me if I put his name on this blog, at a Tofu restaurant. This was honestly the single most pleasant restaurant I’ve ever, ever come across. Not only was the food amazing (AMAZING, do you hear?), but the staff was incredibly grateful and helpful. Cross-legged, we were sat on tatami mats in front of a table that was full of the most delicious foods I have ever eaten. 13 wonderful meals, including the most most wonderful-lest-est fish I’ve ever eaten, yummy tofu, and free booze. The most exciting thing was a pool of boiling soy milk that was placed in the middle of the table; you scoop out the skin that forms on top of it, add some lime zest and soy milk, and enjoy. I had some (quite a bit) of ume-chu, plum wine, with my dinner, which is not only the most heavenly drink, but also has the advantage that it comes with a drink, and you don’t have to wait until someone fills your glass. As it’s considered very rude and vulgar to fill your own glass, those poor sods who ordered hot sake had to wait a long time for someone to fill their shot glass sized cups.

The night didn’t end there. Kim-sensei had just figured out that I was German but didn’t like beer or mean, which seemed to intrigue him a tremendous amount, and led us all to a small jazz bar in Dazaifu. We spent the rest of the evening drinking whiskey, admiring the absence of a smoking ban and listening to the tiny Japanese hair-dresser, who spoke about ten words of English, and entertained us endlessly (also groped some of the guys, oh well!). We wobbled into the last train and, back at Cambridge House, followed the house rules (“if you come back drunk, please be discreet about it”) and fell asleep blissfully.

7 September 2011: Superhero signature

I got my inkan today! An inkan is a seal that is used in Japan instead of a signature. The Japanese sign important documents with their personalised inkan, teachers stamp their students’ homework, and excited travellers (like me) stamp pretty much everything they can get their hands on. 

Two days ago, I went to an inkan shop with the nine other scholars and Seb. Yes, there are special shops the size of a smallish living room where hundreds of types are laid out. As Seb said, “the sky is the limit” with inkan. Well, my sky was the 1,000 Yen note (£8) I had in my purse, which was enough for a sweet little thing which looks more or less like a lipstick. 

But deciding on the type of inkan you want is the easiest part, really. The most important bit is to decide how to spell your name. With three alphabets (hiragana, katakana, kanji) the Japanese language offers a lot of, well, letters. There are thousands of kanji, and every single one looks different (and to me, at this point, impossible to write, with their minute strokes, squares and squiggles) but all are pronounced according to the basic Japanese syllables. So, spelling I-NA can be done in many, many ways. And that’s where the fun started on Monday, with ten scholars, Seb, the shop keeper and the owner all squeezed into a tiny room full of super expensive inkan (15,800 Yen!! The sky is high!) on wobbly tables. I think the three Japanese speakers spent an hour uhm-ing and ah-ing at each other and squiggling elaborate signs to find something fancy that essentially spelt “i”. I settled for a kanji with an “i” sound that stands for “cloak”, or “cloth”, or “cape”, and a kanji with a “na” sound that is often used in girls’ names. “Cape girl” seemed pretty cool to me (I would spell it out here, but I haven’t got the faintest idea how to find these kanji on the internet).

The inkan were meant to take two days, and two days they took. In Japan, people like to be on time. Our bus earlier this week was meant to leave at 12.20 pm, and as the clock went from 12.19 to 12.20, the bus driver looked left, right, and drove off. My word, I love this country.