Bathing Naked In Beer

Oh yes, last Wednesday - in what is likely to be the most decadent evening I'll have for a fair old while, almost worthy of Caligula himself - I got to live out the fantasy of many a bloke, and you know what? It felt good...

Thanks to a phone call from Sean, he and I headed out to everyone's favourite bathhouse/brewery 'Nohan' where they were holding a beer promotion. Funny, I'd imagine that if you were trying to sell a drink you'd get the potential customers to taste it rather than soak in it - hey, I'm not complaining though.

Japanese onsen etiquette dictates that you enter completely bereft of clothing with nothing more than a loincloth-shaped towel to protect your modesty, and shower thoroughly before getting into the water. The actual bath area of this place, the men's bit anyway, is split between an indoor and a sheltered outdoor area - two baths inside, a super hot one and two individual barrel-type baths with cold water outside. It was one of these cold ones which had its water supply connected to a stack of those large metal draught cannisters, through which was pumped gallons of diluted dark ale at something like a 30-40% mix....

After soaking even longer than usual in the super hot one to the point where I could almost bear it no longer, it was time - what can I say? Cooling down in the cloudy, amber depths of a barrel-shaped bath is a slightly icky, if not entirely unpleasant experience. What tends to happen in these cold ones is that your body cools rapidly, causing large amounts of blood to suddenly rush to your head, making one feel somewhat woozy. Add the fumes of God knows how many litres of booze to the mix, and the sensation is made just that touch more intense. Protocol clearly demanding I scoosh myself with water from the showers before getting back in the hot stuff, much fun was no doubt had by the other patrons while watching me attempt to walk in a straight line, my loincloth half-cocked (so to speak) and almost headbutt the shower head.

Of course, what with rules being rules and my digital camera not being waterproof I have no photographic evidence to prove any of this. On the other hand, perhaps it's best that I spare you such wanton imagery. I hear they may be having another one of these again soon, wonder if they'll use the pilsner next time...

High Speeds, Hedonism and Hiccups in Hiroshima Part Two

Leaving earlyish so as to catch ourselves one of Hiroshima’s charming trams (why so many towns and cities in the UK ever got rid of theirs I’ll never know – honestly, cars become popular, the trams just get in the way so they’re taken out, and now we get congestion charges because there’s so many cars clogging up the streets, don’t make no sense, but I’m diverging wildly here) out to Miyajimaguchi (jima means ‘island’ in Japanese, fact fans), it was a gloriously sunny day. After the brief 20 minute ferry ride on board an old-fashioned vessel that bore some resemblance to a Mississippi Steamboat, we found ourselves outside Miyajima harbor surrounded by sundry tourists and, somewhat curiously, a large number of fawns and adolescent deer randomly wandering around. Turns out that these were one of the island’s more kawaii attractions, as they’re found everywhere, delighting visitors and very sweet they seem too, at least until one starts to notice the amount of deer crap trodden into the ground and sees packs of them rifling through litter bins at night in search of food.

First off, we headed straight for the ------- shrine (I can’t remember the name, I know, my memory’s frightful) and took the requisite photos of its water-erected gate. From here, we were interested in checking out some of the delights to be found at the top of the island. I’d hesitate to call it a mountain, but a cable car was there to take visitors to the peak of Miyajima’s high ground. From what we could see, the main point of interest was what appeared to be a monkey sanctuary.

When we emerged from the cable car station, indeed, there were quite a few. Whether it was a ‘sanctuary’ as such was slightly harder to tell. More specifically, they appeared to be red-faced baboons rather than actual monkeys, for the most part either lounging around picking flies off each other, or else dramatically scaling the walls of the nearby café/gift shop. Whatever, it was nice to be able to see them from close up.

Wandering around a little, we got to a look out point and took time to take in the pretty spectacular views of Miyajima, its surrounding islands and the concrete sprawl of Hiroshima City, glittering away in the distance. Repairing to the café for a couple of beers and the usual unidentifiable complimentary Japanese bar snacks, we rested for a bit and then embarked on a walk that was to take us the rest of the afternoon.

Our viewing appetites whetted by what we’d already seen from the cliff tops earlier, we made for the observation platform located at the very highest point on the island. On our way there, we encountered a fellow Englishman, John, there on holiday with a few friends. He was there on his own, having done a whistle stop tour of Miyajima with his companions the day before and wanting to come back and do it again, but properly this time. With Mark and I explaining the various intricacies of the JET Programme to him on the way, we made it to a couple of shrines, past a large clump of boulders and finally to the observation structure itself, complete with several small deer in attendance. How they’d made it so far up and managed to stay there, I don’t know. After we’d marveled at the even more spectacular views and dried off from the sweat we’d all accumulated after the exertion of getting there, Mark and myself attempted an extremely tenuous, not to mention highly inaccurate homage to the cover of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds like the good music geeks that we are. You can judge the results for yourself above.

After this, the brave decision was taken to hike back down again, rather than get the cable car. Alright, so it was downhill all the way, but when the path mostly consists of uneven steps and haphazard rocks, it puts slightly more strain on the old calves than a simple sloping gradient would. Nevertheless, we got back to town just as the sun was setting, passing through a picturesque shrine on the way.

Famished and desperately thirsty by this point, another Hiroshimayaki was called for, prompting John to claim it as by far the tastiest Japanese dish he’d had up to that point. Done with food, it was back to the ferry for a parting of the ways with John and a night of hopefully wild, reckless, drunken abandon for Mark and myself.

Once back in town, Opium seemed closed for a private party, so what’s to do? Hit Hiroshima’s prime generic faux Irish Bar ‘Molly Malone’s’, that’s what. Thus commenced much sippage of Guinness to the accompaniment of the Pogues, U2, the Undertones, The Divine Comedy and all your usual Irish favourites. Sometimes it’s nice to swallow your pride and embrace the comforts of the theme pub, after all.

After a being there for a quite a while, our thoughts turned to trying to find a club. With Japan’s club culture, such as it is, apparently consisting solely of awful meat market places designed to attract bovine foreigners, and really good places playing great music to fantastic crowds that are impossible to find, we weren’t expecting much. Consulting a map of Hiroshima’s night spots kindly lent to me by fellow Wakayama JET Gemma we set off in search of a place going by the enigmatic name of ‘Cover’, found it, but on the verge of entering heard the strains of ‘Stuck in The Middle With You’ by Stealer’s Wheel drifting up the stairs of a basement bar over the road. Well, clearly we’d found our place.

Upon entering and parting with the reasonable fee of 1,500 yen (including complimentary drink, yay!) we found ourselves in a very small, extremely dimly lit and quite busy bar, complete with compact dancefloor, stage playing host to a hyperactive DJ and a fair few extremely amped punters. After Mister Blonde’s ear-slicing waltz had ended, Mr DJ fired up some…Charleston. Yes, 30s style big band stuff with jazz drums and cornets. The crowd went appreciatively wild. Shortly after this came ‘Pretty Fly For A White Guy’ (not great, admittedly, but the jarring juxtaposition amused me greatly) followed by some bizarre eighties hair-metal theme to a Japanese kids’ cartoon. Great stuff – I for one am highly appreciative of any DJ that chucks a whole load of random stuff together and habitually wrong-foots the crowd.

Things kept getting better, with another guy taking over to play a mini set of ska, another delving into eighties British pop and fifties easy listening, and so on and so forth. Not only were the DJs delightfully loopy throughout, visibly getting off on what they were doing, unlike the po-faced bores that are endemic in the UK, the crowd were frenzied, all facing forward and ecstatically snapping away with phones and cameras. Even better, we were the only foreigners in there, besides one guy who wondered in, body-popped for half an hour and promptly wandered out again. Irritating, quasi-racist, holier-than-thou inverted snobbery though this may be, once you’ve been on as many nights out in this country as we have, you’ll appreciate that large numbers of ex-pats assembled together in one club is rarely a good thing.

All grand, apart from one thing – the mysterious Hiroshima Hiccupping Hex. I’d come down with a pretty bad bout of the hiccups the previous night for some reason or other and didn’t think too much of it, at least until I started having a thoroughly miserable time in this otherwise fantastic place. Now, having to leave a club because excessive drinking has left your brain unable to carry out basic motor functions is a valid excuse. Having to leave a club because a combination of lots of beer and giggling (usually over some hilarious recollection from mine and Mark’s university days or reference to a Chris Morris sketch) throughout the evening has led to an onset of hiccups so bad that you can barely breathe properly, never mind form coherent sentences is just a bit…well, rubbish really.

Yet that’s pretty much what happened. We had an innings of maybe two hours or so, which I didn’t think was that bad, before I personally had to leave. Passing the DJs huddled round the exit on our way out, we paused to show them our verbal appreciation in a typically cack-handed way, before we headed off, with me being propelled up the road by the power of my own diaphragm.

One final note on clubs out here – whether the place be hideous gaijin trap or none-more-hip place to be seen, you won’t find any bouncers anywhere. I can’t even begin to explain how liberating the total absence of those bomber-jacketed, knuckle-scraping Neanderthals whose greatest pleasures in life revolve around intimidating paying customers and hitting people and getting paid for it, actually is. All you get is door staff whose job is to charge for entry, most of whom look as though they’d be rubbish in a fight. Of course, should a group of punters get leathered, start getting lairy, and it all kick off, there might be a problem.

Who knows though, perhaps all Japanese bar staff are trained in karate? In fact, what I want to know is why it is that the home of so many martial arts disciplines is, on the whole, a non-violent society that doesn’t see the need for ‘security’ in places where the young go to get drunk and dance. Could it possibly be that the air of menace and barely-suppressed aggression that greets you in any provincial club in the UK before you’re even through the door is, in some senses, a self-fulfilling prophecy? You assume that everyone coming in is going to get smashed and act like a complete tool, therefore most of the people that come in get smashed and act like a complete tool. I don’t know, but I won’t be going out anywhere as much as I’ve done here once I’m back in the UK, that’s for sure…

After a convulsive sleep and a rather woozy process of coming to, the following morning left us with plenty of time to kill before catching our shinky back to Osaka at 5 in the afternoon. After watching Mark’s hopes of getting a roast at Molly Malone’s savagely dashed (Sunday’s only – well, duh) we had lunch and spent lots of time mooching around a branch of Time Records, drooling over the cheap and highly desirable music-making kit at a guitar shop and supping beers outside a posh brasserie before hitting the station.

So, that was Hiroshima – my expectations of the place were well and truly exceeded. To witness the dense, vibrant city that has emerged only 60 years after it was all but annihilated is quite an inspiration.

High Speeds, Hedonism and Hiccups in Hiroshima Part One

And so it was, in yet another voyage to a must-see part of Japan last weekend, that I found myself cramped into the busy adjoining section of a Shinkansen or ‘bullet train’. I’d managed to get on at Shin-Osaka and happily met Mark on the train itself – given how busy it was, it was just as well. Somehow, the packed ‘standing room only’ nature of things wasn’t quite what I’d expected from Japan’s premier rail service. And, more to the point, not what I’d expected from a 50 quid fare either.

Still, rocketing along at God knows what kind of speed, we were in Hiroshima in little over an hour, somewhat the worse for wear (poor old Mark had been standing all the way since the express he’d got from Toyama-ken) but at least with time on our side, it being 2pm. With my ears gradually returning to normal after all the popping they’d been doing throughout the journey (people frequently compare the Shinkansen to going by plane for a reason) we hopped in a cab and made our way to Minshuku Ikedaya, our digs for the next two nights.

Pretty basic as Japanese-style (which basically means there’s tatami mats in the room and you sleep on a futon) places go, we were nonetheless pretty much in the center of town. Thus, once we’d rested up a tad and got our room TV fill of CNN, MTV, the Disney Channel and Jude Law getting bludgeoned round the head in a showing of The Talented Mister Ripley, we were ready to head.

A fifteen minute walk got us to Hiroshima’s main landmark, the famous A-Bomb dome. For those that don’t know, this is the only structure still left standing in the center of town since the bomb fell in August 1945. Now fenced off and regularly maintained to keep it preserved exactly as it was in the immediate aftermath, the skeletal remains look ghostly when set against the usual Japanese cityscape of high rises and neon.

Attached to this is the large, green expanse of the impeccably looked-after ‘Peace Park’, based around a central boulevard that takes in a flame that will be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon is decommissioned (excellent sentiment, but with the current people in charge, I’m not holding my breath) and leads to the wonderfully brutal, modernist building that houses the memorial museum.

With a charge of \50 (25p) to get in, making a profit is not exactly the aim of this place. Instead it does what every good museum ought to do, leave you more informed and knowledgeable than you were before.

Broad in scope, the ground floor explains the Hiroshima’s role as virtually a city-sized war factory in the late 30’s and early 40’s and goes on to briefly explore Japan’s intervention in China. The museum, not to mention large sectors of the government, have come under fire in recent years for playing down, or at the very least not doing enough to atone for, the sins it committed back then in the name of empire expansion. Here at least we get a mention of the siege of Nan-King and the massacre of Chinese civilians carried out by the Japanese military. The reasoning and thinking behind the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour does go brazenly unexplained, however. Fair enough, it’s not the aim of the museum to give a complete narrative of Japan’s history throughout WWII, but given Peal Harbor’s crucial importance in setting in motion the events that would ultimately lead to Hiroshima’s near total destruction, you’d think they might fill you in a bit more as to why they did it.

Where the museum surpasses itself, however, is in the display cabinets containing declassified memos and communiqués from within the Allied Forces in the run-up to the attack, demonstrating one of the hardest, coldest processes of bureaucracy you’re likely to see outside of the arrangements for the Holocaust. Shown alongside deeply strange photographs of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin sitting together and looking all chummy, it’s quite an education.

Upstairs is where the gallery of the grotesque begins – battered watches with their hands frozen at 8.15, torn and tattered school uniforms, life-sized dioramas of stricken children fleeing burning buildings with their limbs melting, stark black and white photographs of traumatized burns victims, large blocks of granite with the silhouettes of people burnt into them…it’s all pretty harrowing.

After moving through here in near total silence along with everyone else, one then emerges into the Why Nuclear Weapons Are A Really Bad Idea area. Wall friezes explain the (very) basic principles of nuclear fission and fusion and their respective employment in Atomic, Hydrogen and Neutron Bombs, a large 3D model of the Earth illustrates the location and arsenal sizes of the nuclear powers (though as Mark pointed out, oddly failing to include Israel) and various bits of text and illustrations that outline the facts behind nuclear testing. The only major omission as far as I could see was the absence of any comment regarding the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who didn’t get so much as a look in. Something of an oversight, I thought.

With the announcement that the museum would shortly be closing, we drifted out into an eerily deserted Peace Park at dusk. We’d been on our feet for hours and really needed to unwind for a bit, so we headed townwards to take in Hiroshima’s unique and extremely tasty take on that Kansai culinary staple okonomiyaki (lots of bean sprouts, noodles, egg and pork sandwiched between a pancake/falafal hybrid) before hitting a rather trendy bar by the name of Opium for a couple of so-so lagers. After some bawdy and highly experimental booth-based karaoke (with just the two of us there, we thought we’d attempt some rather more outré selections than usual – I now consider ‘Informer’ by Snow to be almost avant garde in its lyrical complexity) and the obligatory half-pissed Picture Club (another time), with a provisional plan of taking in the attractions of Miyajima the following day, we called it a night.

Telephonic Hi-jinks

Of course, it's not all socialising and gallivanting around exotic locales out here - oh no. We're expected to do the odd bit of teaching too. So, in the interest of adding a little variation to the likes of "...and then we went for a few drinks and got really drunk in [insert name of Japanese city here], great, yeah," I thought I'd share some of my teaching experience with you.

Given that my 'job', such as it is, essentially revolves around devising classroom activities while sticking broadly to a series of lesson topics outlined by the textbook, I'm allowed a pretty free reign is terms of instructing the students what to do. For instance, my senior high students (age range 14-18ish) have this week been practicing telephone conversations. Personally, I think this is one of my niftier ideas and may serve to inspire others...possibly.

Anyway, in all classes, I'm teamed with a fellow Japanese Teacher of English (JTE) and we teach the class together. Their role can be limited to providing interpretations of my instructions when required, or be employed more constructively by allowing me to carry out two activities at the same time. To wit...

I prepare a sheet on which an example telephone conversation is printed on one side and a dialogue with bits missing for students to fill in on the other. So far, so unimaginative. I then hand out a second sheet on which is printed a blanked-out dialogue explaining how to make a voicemail answering message and how to leave one. I then play a pre-prepared tape to the class of me speaking: "Hello, you're through to Callum. I'm not in at the moment, but if you leave a message I'll get back to you". Recorded into a computer beforehand, I filter it to sound crackly and add a long 'beeep' at the end for added pizazz.

Then, leaving the students to practice the conversation dialogue while being supervised by the JTE, I set the tape recorder up in the corridor outside, call out the students two at a time and record them performing the dialogue outlined on the voicemail sheet. When all the students are done (or as many as possible within the lesson's 50 minute time limit), I set up the tape recorder in the classroom, and in the lesson's last five minutes, play back all the messages to the hopelessly embarrassed assembled students.

The great thing about this approach is that with students as shy and reticent as mine, it enables them to sort of speak to the rest of the class in absentia - without the pressure of 20 pairs of eyes on them while they're doing it. They can afford to concentrate a bit more on their pronunciation while speaking, and critically examine it themselves when they hear it back, assuming they're not giggling too much at the time.

For my next trick, the idea is to get the students to use the conversation dialogue sheets they spent the above lesson practicing, in a more instinctive way. Thus, assuming all the JTEs okay it, my plan for next lesson's warm-up activity is to get the JTEs to bring their keitai (mobiles) to the lesson. With my ketai number programmed into theirs, I will proceed to pass my keitai around the classroom. With my back to the class, I then use the teacher's keitai to call mine - whichever student happens to be holding it, has to answer and use it as a prop (I'll have hung up by this point) while we perform the dialogue that they (ought to) have practiced. We'll have to wait and see how successful this is...

So, a rather sober posting, but a necessary change of pace. Still, all being well I'm off to Hiroshima tomorrow with good buddy Mark (erstwhile housemate, university chum and now fellow JET in Toyama ken) where things of much interest will doubtless occur. Looks like I might also be taking my first trip on the shinkansen (bullet train) which is veh exciting...

Four Go Mad In Okinawa - Part Three

After another horrifically hot and somewhat arduous trek to the harbour, we caught the ferry, enjoyed the fun and bumpy ride and located our Greek-themed hostel in Naha without too many problems.

After hitting the frighteningly dense urban jungle of the city’s central district for lunch (shamefully consisting of a Maccy D’s on main thoroughfare Kokusai Dori - I know, I know, but it’s about the only reliable non-Japanese convenient food staple we have out here, a duck wrap with hoisin sauce or a hot panini would have been lovely, but it was never going to happen) Mark and Melissa, who I should probably point out at this stage are actually a couple, hence the time they spent together, opted to go gift shopping, while Sean and I checked out a music store so I could buy a talon-shaped pick for my hand-made samishan back in Wakayama. For our troubles, the owner gave us each a postage-stamp sized piece of genuine snakeskin on our way out (no doubt cut from one of those long-suffering habi) to keep in our wallets so that "much money may flow though them" (fine by me), following which, we headed to Shuri-jo, Naha’s castle, pictured above.

Very big, very red and surprisingly non-Japanese in general appearance we both had a good poke around the place, before catching a big red gate thing nearby, which must be quite important, as it features on the rare 2,000 yen note. Yes, alright, when it comes to my learning of Japanese history I am truly shocking in my dogged ignorance.

That night saw the belated proper celebration of Sean’s 24^th year at a nomihodai (one upfront fee gets you all can eat from a buffet and all you can drink from the bar for four hours – not half bad for 10-15 quid I reckon) beer hall, which was worth it for the booze but not so much for the distinctly lacking food. Such is normally the way with these places, but since I’d had a McDonald’s earlier that day, it’s not as though I can get on my culinary high horse here.

Following this was yet more karaoke, booth style this time, and in a porno-tastic setting that resembled an early eighties city boy bachelor pad – lots of matte black, red borders and revolving chairs that glided spectacularly well at high speeds across the floor. Much fun indeed was had raising chair-related havoc in the corridor outside, bashing into random doors and saying hi to the bemused occupants before careening away again.

After our time was up (broken to us by a phonecall to our ‘room’ – I’m never the one who answers for both my sake and the staff’s), we headed hostel-wards to the rooftop bar where Sean and myself were determined to claim the complimentary awamoris we’d been promised when we checked in. Bad idea. Mark and Melissa didn’t last long before retiring, which was an extremely sensible course of action, as shortly after they’d gone, we were joined by sizeable group of soccer players from Yokohama. That's them you can see up there. Yeeeaah….

The extremely accommodating barmaid was good enough to let me loose on her iPod and provide a jittery soundtrack to the ensuing conversational chaos (“American.” “American? Ah, veh good! You?” “English.” “Aha, yeah! English! England! Beckham! Veh nice!” you know, that sort of thing) while me and Sean concentrated on chugging back the boozy goodness, which I soon came to regret in the small hours of that morning when, coming to in a stifling room in which the coin-operated aircon had clicked off some time ago, I found myself desperately ill and managed to haul myself to the downstairs bathroom just in time to spew. Only my second ever drink-related vomit in Japan, that. Not very nice though.

And so, to our departure. With the emergency excavation of my guts the previous night having have had absolutely no effect whatsoever on the nausea aspect of my usual hangover routine, I suffered a great deal all the way to the airport. Even once there, due to a check-in system of Kafka-esque complexity that required us all to queue no less than three times, I was really not in the best of moods.

The low point came during ‘breakfast’ at a branch of A & W which, according to Sean and Melissa, is a root beer company of all things, which some time ago branched into the fast food industry. They needn’t have bothered. What I assumed was the safe option of a ham and cheese toasted sandwich (pleasant memories of breakfasts at Amsterdam coffee shops spurring me on) turned out in fact to be a flaccid, mayonnaise-drenched processed monstrosity which I would hardly have been able to stomach at the best of times, never mind in my present condition.

Storming out of the restaurant in search of something slightly more recognisable as food I was grateful to come across a bakery serving croissants and black coffee. Like some magical elixir, the restorative power of these two dependable breakfast companions banished my morning-after demons to such an extent that I could even enjoy a cigarette in the smoking lounge. (‘Callum Fauser’s Guide To A Better, Healthier You’ is available now in shops, priced $When Hell Freezes Over).

After that and the most thoughtless gift shopping for work colleagues I have ever performed, it was back aboard the (sadly non Pokemon-themed) plane, homeward-bound.

Okinawa truly was lovely, but remember what we’ve learned kids – awamori is a dangerous mistress, big spiders are abominations of nature, no matter what anyone says, snorkelling rocks and American-style fast food always deserves to be treated with the utmost suspicion, if not contempt.

Four Go Mad In Okinawa - Part Two

The next morning began with a vigorous stroll up to the first observation platform overlooking Zamami’s south-western bay designed for the purpose of whale-spotting. No whales at this time of year, mind. Intending to make the most of the blazing sunshine we were lucky enough to have been blessed with (even though I could feel it frying my pasty Caucasian skin from one minute to the next), we then opted for an afternoon by the beach.

This was an extremely good move. With snorkel kits and flippers hired from one of the several beachfront vendors, all four of us took to the gloriously clear waters for a close up look at some fish. There was some pretty amazing stuff to see down there, once my smoker’s lungs became acclimatised to the idea of breathing underwater and stopped hyperventilating of their own volition. Once they did, I was free to enjoy a cornucopia of aquatic attractions, even that pulsating stuff attached to coral that appears to be breathing, and in its own way probably is. The only slight downside was the frequency with which one would find oneself colliding underwater with someone else, both of you too busy gawping at that bloody big trout thing with the shimmering skin to see where you were going.

Sean and myself then went for a bit of a wander to case out some of the deserted beaches just out of sight of the main area. After potentially risking life and limb scaling the huge deposits of black rock and minerals that separated one beach from another, we found ourselves at one virtually resembling a lunar landscape, albeit a very sunny one.

After we returned, I got my first go on a banana boat with Mark and Melissa (great until you fall off, which only happened three times, to my surprise), soak my sun-ravaged skin in some cooling shade and tuck into a supremely dodgy ‘curry rice’. A hike back to town found us doing the rounds of three izakayas for some refreshing Orions, bracing awamoris and conscious avoidance of an Okinawan vegetable speciality going by the name of Goya. For all I know, it might be the main reason behind Okinawa’s extremely high life-expectancy rate but that doesn’t stop it being rather unpleasant. Thin, green, knobbly and bitter as hell, readers of Roald Dahl’s ‘The BFG’ are encouraged to call to mind the ‘snozzcumber’. Goya can be served in a number of ways, as part of a wide variety of dishes, all of them inedible.

Anyway, our final port of call was my bathroom refuge from the previous night, where Mark and Sean regaled our group and the business outing that were the only other patrons there with a particularly raucous karaoke workout. The latter lost points, however, for violently singing ‘I Will Survive’.

So, to Friday (if you’re still with me by this point, I truly salute you), and a very active day, all told. It began with us all kayaking out to one of the smaller islands off Zamami where we initially carried out an investigation of the deserted beaches for any signs of life, finding only a large number of hermit crabs clustered in a cave and a boat party from the mainland gathered beneath parasols.

From here, we paddled around a bit to a small cove, allowing access to a lighthouse we’d spotted on our walks at night. A 10-minute hike found us outside an imposing locked blast door, seemingly designed to withstand nuclear attack, attached to a tiny structure with a light at the top of it. The ones in Cornwall (like what Portland Bill had) are much better, if you ask me. Anyway, after lunch in the limited shade of this thing it was back to the boats and back to the mainland for a bit of a rest.

With Mark and Melissa looking to get in some more quality snorkelling time (I’d have gladly gone too, were it not for my dangerously pink shoulders and shins), Sean and myself kicked back at the campsite. Following a shower in the site’s toilet block, I had the dubious pleasure of encountering my first Japanese Hunting Spider on my way out – these are supposedly harmless and utterly terrified of humans (great hunter, eh?) but that didn’t stop this bastard from being absolutely F%)@&ING HUGE and scaring the life out of me. It was clinging to the wall above the sink, brown and about twice the size of a human hand, before it suddenly zipped away, up and into one of the toilet cubicles that had been mysteriously sealed with gaffer tape. Maybe that’s where its nest was. I shudder to think. Unfortunately, my camera wasn’t on me, therefore I can’t share this nightmarish vision with you all. You can relax then, and get a good night’s sleep tonight. Me? It haunts my dreams, whuhuhha…

Anyway, driven mad by the campsite’s population of flies (See? Where are the damn spiders when you actually need them?), Sean and I opted to move to the ‘whaling platform’, to chill for a while, before taking a bit of a walk to the northern side for a good view of the sunset. After a bit of a read and a snooze at the first place, we commenced hiking for a good hour or so at least, before finding the place we were after, high above the town and just off the island’s perimeter road. Briefly saying hello to a travelling party from Osaka and their two dogs who rudely didn’t offer us a lift back (the party, not the dogs, though I suspect they might have been in charge), we found our spot, got snap-happy (up there’s the best of my rather patchy lot) and trudged back as night began to fall.

With dinner at a restaurant (yaki soba for me, definitely no bloody Goya) and a couple of beers on the beach by the campsite, we were ready to turn in, ahead of our move to Naha the following day.

Four Go Mad In Okinawa - Part One

Cor, get a load of those pictures, nice aren’t they? Aside from the one of me flashing my keks of course. Yes, last week (September 21^st if memory serves) myself, Americans Sean and Melissa and Australian Mark took a flight way down south to the sub-tropical Japanese archipelago of Okinawa for a sun-drenched five days, taking advantage of one of Japan’s many bank holiday weekends and the cheap flights Sean was able to get with Japan’s excellent ‘domestic flight birthday discount offer’.

Having been before last year, it was very good of Sean to go again to pretty much see the same stuff as he did last time, inviting the rest of us along for the ride. The first three nights were spent on the beautiful and extremely sparsely populated island of Zamami, an hour away by catamaran ferry from the region’s main island. Once there, we endured a pretty painful half hour or so trek in the sweltering heat with our backpacks to the campsite we’d booked, set up our tents and then marvelled at the beach we were staying next to, just the other side of a small mangrove. That’s it, right up there. Gorgeous is the word I’d use, with the bluest water I’ve certainly ever seen before, clear enough to make out the distinctive shape of the large tracts of coral just beneath its surface.

After an initial hour or two getting settled and tucking into our supplies of food, we ventured ‘town’wards (more a hamlet, really) where as luck would have it, the local population were celebrating an annual festival in which they all gave offerings to the God of the sea by stockpiling large amount of sake and local brew awamori (more on which later) in a small shrine, leaving it there for a while, and then cracking it all open, to the accompaniment of dancing and general drunken festivities. For our part, we paid 1,000 yen apiece to be allowed inside, and were then presented with a dinner of a whole deep fried fish accompanied by clementines, while also being allowed to tuck into their lager supply, largely consisting of Okinawan tipple of choice, Orion – a very pleasant quaff indeed.

Alas, with none of us having thought to bring our cameras along, no pictorial record of this event exists, at least in our possession. What we saw consisted of the great and the good of the entire island (there was maybe a hundred or so people gathered in the same small space as us) entertained throughout the evening by a hardy-looking fellow in his sixties singing and playing the samishan (traditional three-stringed instrument that resembles an elongated banjo) and his mate accompanying him on Taiko drums. May the God of multiculturalism strike me dead for saying for this, but his repertoire was a bit, well, limited. Pleasant enough, but the ‘songs’ he did sort of ran into each other from what I could tell. The crowd were definitely digging it though, the many children present especially. There was much unstable dancing from locals, who of course managed to drag us gaijin in from time to time. The dance that we were encouraged to follow reminded me rather amusingly of the ‘waving one’s hands above the head emergency signal’ from recent puppet flick Team America: World Police…

Now that I’ve poured arrogant scorn upon centuries old Okinawan music tradition, on to my biggest regret of the trip – in a desperate attempt to locate the toilets at this place, I ended up accidentally wandering off, missing one of the coolest things our party got to do. Stumbling blindly into an izakaya after roundly failing to locate any kind of pissoir, I thought it terribly rude to just use their facilities and promptly leave, so opted for a scotch on the rocks first, as you do. After a baffling five minute wait for said drink (I was one of very few people there), I got talking to a particularly attractive girl visiting from Chie prefecture, staying with one of the bar staff. What was said, I can’t even begin to remember, but it ended with me promising to return with my companions in tow. Conscious that said friends may well be wondering where I was by this point, I made my way back to the party shrine where it turned out I’d missed the passing of the habi awamori trophy chalice.

As briefly mentioned before, awamori is an insanely strong alcoholic concoction similar to the Japanese shochu drunk on the mainland, intended to be diluted before drinking. Some varieties of awamori are interestingly served alongside a poisonous snake known as the habi, usually by placing them in the bottle, in a similar fashion to the worm found in traditional tequila, only slightly more extreme. In this instance, the winner of what I think was some kind of boating and/or fishing award placed a habi (dead, I would imagine) in his large bowl-shaped trophy, filled it up with awamori and proceeded to pass it around the crowd. While I wasn’t there. Which really bothered me, as I’d wanted to try this habi juice myself since first hearing about it, and knew I’d be far too stingy to buy a whole bottle of the stuff myself. Either way, according to the others it was good fun but didn’t taste too great. Now there’s a surprise.

With Mark and Melissa opting for an early night, Sean and myself briefly chanced the izakaya where my latest acquaintance appeared to be busy helping out the others running the place, leaving me to repeatedly try and subsequently fail to catch her eye. Hey ho.

Bartender, Mine’s a Beckham

Yes, that rather noxious-looking drink you see up there is in fact a cocktail ordered in a Wakayama Shi izakaya (read: pub) going by the name of a ‘Beckham’. Why, Christ knows. In case you’re interested, it includes apple liqueur, vodka, calpis (pronounced ‘cow piss’, some kind of sweet milk thing they have over here) and another juice of some kind, possibly lemon.

Looking like a violent collision between a Snowball and some waste material from a DNA laboratory, it’s sweet enough to risk causing permanent damage to one’s taste buds. Think I’ll stick to the GNT’s, thanks…

Introducing My Mate Dave

Yep, that’s him there, wearing the cap beside a couple of his mates. He met fellow JET Gemma at Shirahama beach one day following his recent return from studying English in Canada, who in turn was surprised to hear that he lived in Ogura.

Soon enough, en route to a get together organized by Gemma in her stomping ground of Momoyama Town, myself and Daisuke got acquainted for the first time. The ‘Dave’ part is because the English equivalent to his given Japanese name is, according to his Canadian teacher, David. Thus, I’ve taken to calling him ‘Dave’ but only when I’m pissed. He’s an alright chap, into his swimming, surfing (I think), R ‘n’ B and ensuring that he always sports sharp threads. Bit of a townie, all told, but in the nicest possible way. Hardcore smoker too, which I always appreciate in a person for the way it assuages my own feelings of guilt regarding my habit.

So far, I’ve gone for an exceptionally fine Korean meal with him and two of his friends (and have come to the conclusion that Korean cuisine, origin of the mighty Yaki Niku, is my new dai suki no tabemono du jour) and a rather peculiar afternoon Karaoke session. Peculiar, because in my experience daylight and the shedding of dignity that usually accompanies this activity would not seem to mix at all well. What with him having just started work at popular ‘young things’ hangout ‘Bird Bar’ in Wakayama Shi, he might be somewhat preoccupied in the weeks to come but, hey. All told, it’s very good to have gotten to know an Oguran native below the age of 65 and still in possession of all his teeth.

New Blood and Hurricanes

So, upon my return to Japan, it wasn’t long before the autumn/winter school semester cranked its way into life and I found myself standing in a series of classrooms beside a stack of expensive audio visual equipment, delivering a PowerPoint presentation on ‘Talking About My Family’. Yep, my return to teaching happily coincided with the ‘Family’ unit of the textbook giving me a good chance to show various photos and videos of my parents and grandparents to my resolutely nonplussed students. I must have done it about seven or eight times in all, but it was worth it to see their expressions while watching the footage of my cat frolicking in the hallway. “Kawaii ne!” quoth they, which roughly translates as “Cute, huh?”

The weekend of that initial first week back consisted of, as I dimly recall, a WAJET (Wakayama’s chapter of AJET, which in turn is a kind of JET equivalent of a student’s union which organizes social events, councilling services, help, advice and stop me if I’m boring you) bash at Shirahama Beach way down in the south of Wakayama Prefecture. Much fun was had by all, splashing about in waves and dealing with the horrible gungy mess that sticks to your legs when sand and sunblock inevitably meet.

I may have laboured the point before (and I thoughtfully left it out of the ruminations on my home country elsewhere) but the drinking culture here in Japan really is fabulous. All of us who went (20 at the very least, possibly more) were able to stock up on cans of beer and chu-hi (nuclear-strength alcopop that would instantly cause an urban apocalypse if ever introduced to Britain’s Saturday night high streets) from a convenience store located just off the beach and happily quaff them while sitting mere feet away from families with young children who were doing much the same thing themselves (the parents, mind, not the kids – it’s not that liberated). No fights, no shouting, no drowning, no abuse, no trouble – incredible. They have a secret to having civilized fun with booze out here, and I’d love to know what it is.

Anyway, after a long, lazy afternoon, our assembled mass of foreigners piled into a fleet of cars bound for Assistant Language Teacher Hailing Originally From New York Peter Katz’ house where a largeish scale barbecue party was planned.　The party proceeded in a thoroughly pleasant manner with much drinking and consuming of chargrilled food, marred only slightly by my managing to get hopelessly lost for an hour and a half in the unfamiliar surrounding neighbourhood in an attempt to buy a pack of cigarettes.

Still, the day’s combined festivities gave me a chance to get to know a number of the new JET recruits starting this year, and thoroughly good eggs they were too, as far as I could see. The extent to which drink may have affected my social skills remains unknown, but I certainly remember feeling very at ease and chatty, in a marked contrast to last year when a mixture of confusion and disorientation over my first month or so caused me to be a great deal more cautious, reserved and uptight. I can safely say that I no longer occupy that same peculiar headspace, for which I’m thankful.

Aaaaanyway, it was good to meet some of the new blood billeted at my end (sort of) of the prefecture then and on the days that followed; Brits Sarah and Hannah, Americans Zack and Mercedes and Irishmen David and Donal. May there be more good times to come.

Finally in this little subsection, a word about hurricanes – I don’t really need to chime in with my two cents worth on Katrina, its subsequent fallout and the fate of New Orleans, but I will say that we out here endured a storm of the exact same size and only marginally less magnitude earlier this month. The news had cast warnings that it would strike at night, so what did I do? Join Mercedes, Sarah and Hannah in the early evening for a trip to the combined onsen (Japanese hot baths, like what the Romans had back in the day) and brewery complex Nohan No Sato half an hour away from me by train. A foolish course of action, not only because my soak was a somewhat solitary one (men and women’s areas being obviously segregated) but because while reclining in the bath located outside with a roof open to the elements, one could see the sky starting to boil. Quite a cool sight, but like I said, not a very sensible thing to do.

After emerging freshly scrubbed and having imbibed flagons of the exceptionally good European-style pilsner brewed on site, we caught the train back to our respective towns, with me just making it up the steps outside my apartment building before the storm's full fury was unleashed, while being buffeted by rather strong winds. Once inside, across came my steel window and door shutters, on went the Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ (which has become something of a tradition, don’t ask me why, I just find it quite soothing during times of meteorological carnage) and the pounding commenced.

Having drifted off somewhere around the outro of ‘Have a Cigar’, I awoke the next morning to howling winds, the sight of an almighty gash left in the rice field outside my apartment and an email from Iwai Sensei (Kii Cosmos special needs school supervisor and aikido partner in crime) requesting my presence at school, assuming the trains were running. With no students of any age attending any school in the entire prefecture due to Wakayama being on ‘alert’ status, my usually claustrophobic train ride in was an absolute breeze, happily.

With the winds pretty much gone upon my arrival and the beginnings of a beautiful sunny day slowly emerging, the Powers That Be were nevertheless taking no chances and kept all our kids at home for the whole day. Thus it was that I busily occupied myself with some half-hearted kanji study, voracious reading of Dan Brown’s Deception Point and a bout of self-flagellation after getting so much enjoyment from that literary equivalent of a Big Mac. A visit to a restaurant with Iwaii for an unagi (that’s Japanese style eel – don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, it tastes fab) lunch relieved the tedium slightly, but truth be told, the day was rather dull.

The point of all this detailed description? No one died, at least not here anyway. I think maybe ten or so people got washed away by swollen rivers and surging seas down in Kyushu, but that was about it, as far as I know. The Japanese at all levels, from the highest official to the smallest child know that their country gets a regular battering at this time of year and have sensibly chosen to take all relevant precautions, namely providing adequate annual public funding for really important stuff such as warning systems, emergency response teams, infrastructure design, drainage implementation and a number of other things I know nothing about, seeing as I’m no expert. The thing is, does all of the US suffer from regular hurricanes? No. Does one particular region there get hit hard every year? Yes, the Gulf coast. There are lessons to be learnt from the way the Japanese appear to have made a pretty good fist of learning to live with the harsher things that nature can throw at its people, and it would seem to me that other countries around the world might want to start paying attention.

Oh, To Be In England

Right then, first off England and my visit to thereof. (Note my adoption of the irritating Japanese habit of failing to recognize the national entity variously known as Britain, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, British Isles, etc.) After a satisfactory flight via Phuket and Bangkok courtesy of Thai Aiways (no back-of-seat monitors for the inflight movies in economy class, boo!) I touched down in Heathrow, got hopelessly confused while attempting to find a coach bound for the prearranged pick up point of Stansted Airport and noticed with a shock how BLOODY COLD it was. Within minutes, my leather jacket was out of the suitcase and around my trembling shoulders, as I marvelled at the assorted Brits milling about in shorts and T-shirts in the British summertime like it was normal or something. Wierdos.

So, aside from the fact that I can navigate far easier in an airport where the signs are all in Japanese and that the abrupt change of climate wasn’t doing much for my body, from this point on I was able to enjoy an extremely pleasant stay at ‘home,’ in reliably bland Colchester (see, up there’s a photo of the High Street – fascinating to the teachers out here but, alas, not to the students it would seem). The grandparents were down from Scotland too, which was nice, having not seen either of them for at least three years or so. My folks’ house, cradle of my adolescence (pictured above), was much the same as it ever was and Vashti the cat (see accompanying illustration) was just as slothful and dismissive as she’s always been, all of which was quite encouraging.

One or two observations on England and the English. Number one, lots of large people – I’m trying to be nice here, when I suppose what I really mean is plain ‘fat.’ This is not to say that there aren’t any porkers in Japan, there are a fair few, but FAR less than I saw on my frequent wanderings around town. Bearing in mind that I’ve only got Colchester and Wimbledon to use as benchmarks, it may not be the case everywhere, but I somehow suspect it might be. Why? Diet? Probably. Lack of exercise? Possibly. I don’t know, all I do know is that I saw a hell of a lot of bellies and that surprised me. Then again, perhaps I’ve just become so used to the sight of beanstalk physiques here in the Far East that anything else seems to be the extreme opposite.

Second, what is it with the number of teenagers pushing prams? I realize this comment is probably pushing me rather uncomfortably towards ideological ground shared by the likes of Norman Tebbit, but really, I saw LOADS. Alright, so maybe all or most of the young mothers I saw weren’t teenagers at all but actually in their twenties, or else were much older siblings, maybe even childminders. Aunts or cousins perhaps. Again, I’m probably making wide-ranging value judgements with nothing to back them up, but what I will say is that in my frequent trips out here to get groceries, visit major cities and travel to other schools, I have yet to see any mother appear visibly younger than twenty five. And the Japanese look young for their age. Honest! That last line’s not racism I can assure you, my Japanese work colleagues and friends have told me so themselves, so could it be the mothers I see are maybe even 35? Maybe I should start asking.

So, besides noticing broad trends of what I took to be a rise in incidents of obesity and teenage pregnancy, what else did I see? Well, not much to tell you the truth. It was still highly aggravating being forced to vacate the cosy confines of a pub at a little after 11pm (not as of November this year though, eh?), and someone really needs to sort out the litter problem on Britain’s streets. Oh yeah, and more Brits should cycle, because bikes are great, but I’m getting preachy now, so I’ll stop this and round off the rest of my time there.

Over the following week and a half, I managed to catch up with buddies Luke, Al, Jarrad and Tom, witness the latter’s drumming involvement with up and coming band Kev and the Mazins at a rehearsal (sure to be setting things off in chamber-folk alt-rock kind of way very soon, I’m sure), journey to London for a meeting with erstwhile housemate and now frighteningly capable public sector co-ordinator Sophie, and meet up with eternal beacon of loveliness Alex. All of which no doubt makes for scintillating reading for all those with no personal knowledge of the above. Except for the fact that the aforementioned are pretty much the only ones who’d ever bother to read these ramblings…duh, duh, duh…

...yes, sorry, where was I? Well, I saw them, and did a number of other pretty banal things involving shopping, curries and time indulging in certain practices that I’m not at liberty to expand upon in a public forum such as this. Basically, what I’m getting at is that going home was really good, and something I’m very glad to have done, as I suspect it will serve to cushion the blow for when I leave JET, most likely in July next year, and get myself a proper job. One final thing though, Marks and Sparks’ sushi is some way short of being authentic. The actual fish is fine, but the rice used to fill the ‘maki zushi’ rolls is terrible. I’d happily grit the path with it in winter, but would have slight reservations in terms of actually eating the stuff again…

The Big Blog Bonanza Starts Here…

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Well now, done a fine job of keeping this little document going, eh? I seem to recall seeing some article in The Grauniad a while back about the huge amount of blogs begun in a blaze of enthusiasm and good intentions, only to end up as neglected and unwanted, lonely tumbleweeds of redundant rhetoric tossed aimlessly around by the cold winds of the .blogspot.com domain. And it so nearly happened here too…

Well, during my extremely brief visit to England in August, considering the amount I had to pack in (catching up with family and friends, gorging myself on familiar foods and drink, devouring as many English language books and magazines as possible, that kind of thing), this written account was never going to be high on my list of priorities until after I got back, but then that was well over a month ago now. With an internet connection at my apartment, there really is no excuse. No more! As of now, I intend to attack this sporadic journal-writing lark with renewed vigour by writing loads, posting it all as separate entries for ease of reading, and making sure to include a load of spurious waffle that one has to wade through before even getting near any details of what I’ve actually been doing lately. Shall we crack on?