Special little guest

Late last night a special little guest and his father came to stay. He is a boy who was in my son's class when we went to New Zealand for 3 months last year and his uncle is from Japan and happens to have the same name as my son. My son was excited to have his own special New Zealand friend come all the way down here to see us and I have enjoyed talking with his father about how things are going in Dunedin etc. Great to have some English speaking adult conversation for a while! Unfortunately the son hasn't been so well so we have been taking it a bit easy and trying to help soothe his sore throat with nice cool ice cream (perhaps not the best thing in Japanese summers!) in between looking at monkeys and having a good sleep. Tonight we had our first "fireworks display" for the summer - probably the first of many. Unlike in New Zealand, fireworks are available for sale basically all summer round in Japan and are a popular evening event. If it wasn't for the smoke I think I would also find them enjoyable....
We are hoping that little Chris (who is actually older than my son) is feeling a bit better in the morning so they can play a bit before they head on the train up north again.

Japanese hospital slippers

My sister is coming to work in Japan from August. In fact she is coming to work at the exact same schools that I worked in about 13 years ago... she is coming as a JET participant to my town - baby sitters in the same town - lucky us! As part of her preparations I was silly enough to ask her if anyone had given her the "shoe" talk. She assured me no one had, but that she was keen to hear it. I tried to explain that although she will wear shoes to school she will not stay in those shoes, but will need to change into "indoor" shoes and then if she wants to do something in the gym she will need to change into "indoor sports" shoes. Of course if she wants to go outside she will need to change into her regular shoes again..... a little complicated for beginners! I didn't want to overwhelm her by letting her know that there are also "toilet shoes" as these are provided for you and therefore only require you stepping into them. The reason I tried to warn her about the indoor shoes thing is because if you don't bring your own "slippers" you are expected to try and walk up and down stairs, do the hokey pokey and carry your lunch on a precarious tray while wearing the "school slippers" - which are basically plastic slip-on thingies that were invented by people who were very good at shuffling or who had such sticky feet that they stuck to the inside of the slippers while walking up stairs rather than having sweaty feet which mean the slippers fall off as soon as you start to attempt any upward (or even forward) movement. For those of us who have been here long enough we know all about these slippers and have a pair of our own, much more comfortable slippers in our cars, handbags and back pockets. For those who don't know it is the dreaded communal slippers or people continually running after you waving slippers at you.

I have a hard enough time thinking about who has been using the slippers when I visit schools, but today I had one of those "only in Japan" kind of experiences which has left me wanting to wash my feet a zillion times! The skin on my daughter's fingers has been peeling off a lot so I finally took her to the "skin doctor" today. They finished school early (I have stopped even bothering to ask why....) and so we were at the doctors by 3pm. The good thing about Japanese doctors is that you don't need an appointment. The bad thing about Japanese doctors is that you can't get an appointment. Despite having to wait almost an hour and a half to see the doctor (for all of 2 minutes) that wasn't the worst part of the experience (we are used to that now)..... the worst part was when I got to the entrance and remembered that that clinic has the "no shoes" policy and therefore requires you to take off your shoes at the door and trade them in for the dreaded communal slippers..... just in case you missed it... this is a skin specialist clinic.... as in half of the people are there for athletes foot, warts, smelly feet etc. Of course my school slippers were not in the car this one time and of course as it is over 30 degrees each day I was not wearing socks. Yuck, yuck and more yuck! My thinking is that they are trying to boost their repeater patient numbers by making sure that all those who come in with peeling fingers this week come back again next week with foot rot. I repeat: yuck, yuck, yuck!
I tried to find a picture of some hospital slippers to give you an idea (the ones I found are from other web pages.. sorry no links) and at the same time discovered a fun article about this very thing - if anyone still has some reading power after getting through this lot of dribble check out the following link: Roller Derby Queen Swishes to Hospital

When it rains it pours

For the last few weeks there have been sighs of disbelief from all the farmers around here as despite the rainy season arriving, there has been no rain in sight. Many rice farmers have had to delay their planting due to water shortages and in general the outlook has been glum. And then about 3 days ago the rain finally came. And came. And is still coming! Now of course there are heavy rain warnings, flooding problems, roads being washed out as hills collapse etc. I haven't even tried to get into my garden but I am guessing there is going to be a fair bit of damage - or perhaps the weeds have been protecting everything....
In an attempt to make the rain stop my son decided to make a "teru teru bozu" - which basically looks like a ghost kind of thing. A lot of children make these if they have a sports day or outing the next day and therefore really need the weather to be fine. I have made them and seen them before, but really had no idea what they were, so I finally decided to look it up. For anyone else who isn't sure...
(As kind of written in Wikipedia): The name "teru teru bozu" can be translated as "Shiny Shiny Buddhist Priest”. "Teru" is a verb that describes sunshine and "bozu" is a Buddhist monk or in modern slang "bald headed". It is a little traditional hand-made doll made of white paper or cloth that Japanese farmers began hanging outside of their windows using a string back in the ancient time, but I am wondering if I hung my father's head out the window if it would have the same effect. He is both a minister and a "little" bald! This amulet is supposed to have magical powers to bring good weather and to stop or prevent a rainy day. If you hang the doll upside down with its head pointing downward acts like a prayer for rain. Perhaps that is where my son went wrong!
Here's hoping the rain stops soon... mind you it has been nice to have a few "inside" days too.

Realizing dreams

Sunday was my husband's birthday (thanks Fi for the message.....) and although we didn't really have any plans we decided to leave the house for the day and go driving. It turned out to be a day of visiting people who had already realized their dreams or were in the first stages of doing so. Our first pit stop was at our friend Uncle Tom's new restaurant. He is opening a takeaway business (unfortunately curry and chicken, not fish and chips!) and in typical Uncle Tom style he is using the "just do it" style rather than the "let's plan and then do it style". It will be interesting to see how long it lasts... it made me think more about how much I would like to start a cafe kind of thing here too though... hopefully one day that dream will be realized without the need to win the lottery first! Any investors welcome.....
After a brief stop at the Japanese version of Hawaii for the kids to have a bit of a play we drove on and visited a cheese factory that is run by a man and his wife in the middle of nowhere and a honey shop that has recently been started by a young man near(ish) here. I really like seeing people starting "specialist" businesses and succeeding here. Japan is very much a "trend following" country where people crowd to one place to buy the "in" food etc., but then quickly lose interest in it and move onto the next fad so it was refreshing to spend time at places where people are not interested in that kind of thing, but just want to make enough money to "survive" and are doing something they love. Maybe one day......

Oita prefecture goes green

My general image of people in Oita prefecture is that they are generally very tight with their money and not exactly environmentally friendly or very "up with the times". Things seem to be changing though. For the last few years most supermarkets have been making efforts to encourage people to bring their own bags by giving discounts or using stamp cards. This had very little impact.... but recently the majority of supermarkets have worked together and now charge 5 yen for a plastic supermarket bag. The fact that people have to pay 5 yen (rather than get a 5 yen discount) seems to have worked for the "stingy" people here and the majority of people now bring their own bags. We may not be able to save the world, but we can help!

The other "green" movement that has been gaining major momentum lately is the planting of grass. I can remember being shocked when I first saw the school grounds here in Japan - they are simply a huge dirt ground. The children play soccer there, they play baseball there, they do athletics there and they fall over there... lots of injuries that could be prevented if the grounds were grass - not to mention the cooling effect of grass in the really hot Japanese summer. People are finally starting to recognise this fact and the number of schools and kindergartens that are planting grass are increasing every week here in Oita. This is mostly due to the efforts of a New Zealander called Neil Smith. He has managed to promote the virtues of grass to many areas of Japan and this morning the kindergarten that my children used to go to planted their grass - after my husband introduced the new method etc. Although we got there a little late it was great to see all the fathers there with their trowels and working together with the children to plant the grass. We have been trying to convince the school to do it too, but things are not looking so promising there. I guess change takes a little more time in the countryside.....

10 in one day!

Sometimes I wonder if we didn't make our cottage too comfortable. Last night my second meeting for the day started in the cottage at 7:30pm and by midnight I had to force the people to leave... time just flies when people are having "fun"! I think I might replace the chairs with very hard ones.....
One of our biggest worries with our chickens was that they were going to be eaten by wild animals. So far we have had no real worries on that front. Last night we all forgot to lock the chickens in at night and still they stayed safe (unlike a fellow farmer in Japan, Kevin: warning pictures are graphic!). We have been having great success with eggs too. Yesterday we were all very excited to discover that all 10 hens had laid and that they had all laid in the nesting boxes. They were all mixed up too so the white and brown hens finally seem to be making friends and so we no longer have to separate food etc. The white hens are making up for their first efforts too and our now producing eggs that rival the brown ones. I think the time has come to get some more regular customers!
In other updates.. all the fish, apart from one cleaning fish, have died. We now have a huge tank with a noisy filter running for one tiny fish. Perhaps this weekend we will need to go shopping! The "we'll bring you all the happiness in the world" swallows also seem to have disappeared. I'm not sure why, but I half suspect my husband... he wasn't too impressed with them from the beginning! Fortunately there are plenty of other birds around to keep us company. I need to get the bird songs CD out to work out what some of them are.
And the update you have all been waiting for...... I have been back to the kindergarten twice since I was poked up the bottom and I am happy to report that I have had no more fingers put in inappropriate places. I did catch one of them doing it to their friends though and managed to give them such an evil look I doubt they will be doing it again soon. I think I should get a medal for "internationalisation"!

Organic farming in Japan

I just got a demanding skype message from my brother telling me (and I quote) "You're not allowed any days off blogging! Mum and I were chatting the other day and we both get irrationally grumpy when you don't put up anything for ages! How am I meant to get through my boring work afternoons if you don't!?". So despite having only 20 minutes before I need to get the kids to their grandparents so I can get to a meeting that I am not likely to get home from before midnight... I will write a quick post. I would hate to think that I am causing any additional grumpiness in our family!
I grow my vegetables organically, but I would never claim that my vegetables are organic. Confused? I never use chemicals in my garden, but the amount of chemicals used on the rice in the surrounding fields is so great that I could never claim that it didn't effect my vegetables - as much as I'd like to say it didn't! I got to be a part of the chemical movement before rice planting started this year. As my mother in law was out of action I got to sprinkle 230 trays of rice seedlings with some kind of chemical (made by THE CHEMICAL COMPANY) that is supposed to kill basically any living thing that comes within a few meters of it. I was warned to make sure I had gloves on and given the special shaker and instructions to spread the contents very evenly over 10 trays. And then repeat the process 23 times.... Just imagine a huge salt shaker and imagine the aches in the not-often-used wrist muscles after completing the task... My parents in law are pretty picky about the way things are done, but I followed a relative's advice and made sure that the corners and edges were well done (ie the bits that could actually be seen) and didn't worry too much about the middle. There were no complaints at rice planting time which means that I will probably be given the job again next year... perhaps I should have done a really bad job! Can hardly wait for the helicopter spraying to begin...

Sorry Mike... not exactly exciting reading, but I did try!

Green Tourism

In an attempt to catch up with happenings here (and avoid weeding in the mud - the rainy season finally seems to have arrived about 2 weeks after it "officially" started) I will try to answer a question Vicky asked me a long time ago as well as introducing our latest guests. Vicky asked about me to explain a little more about what "Green Tourism" is and how we got involved. So... in brief: Green Tourism is an organisation which has been founded in many towns here to give city folk the opportunity to experience country life. It involves people making their homes available for city people to come and stay and become a part of their family. The idea is that they do what you do every day, eat what you eat every day - rather than it being a "hotel" kind of experience where they become the "guests" they simply become an extra member of your family. In order to do be part of this organisation you have to get a permit which involves visits from the fire department, the health department, pieces of paper from the agricultural union etc. etc. Not a simple or cheap process, but this is Japan... they don't try to make anything cheap or simple!
There are 3 main types of guests that we have - the main ones at this time of the year are junior high school students who come as part of a huge group (usually over 200) and are distributed amongst the different hosting families for one or two nights. At the start of each season we are given a list of the dates that are needed and we can decide how many students we want and when we are able to host (in theory....). The second kind of guests we have are ones that find us by themselves and contact us directly - through various homepages that we have/are featured on or by word of mouth. These are often the best groups as they are usually families etc. that we end up keeping in contact with and that come back each year.
The third kind of group are "study" groups from Korea or other Asian countries. They are usually only here once or twice a year, but that is usually enough! They come as a group of about 20 and come to study the different ways of doing agriculture here. Before they arrive we are given a name list, which basically tells us if they are male or female and very little else. Guessing their ages before they arrive is always an impossible task! They usually just come to stay the night and don't actually do any agriculture etc. with us. Anyway, the latest group was a group of 5 men and although they were very nice, they were very young and most of them were the oldest son in their families and therefore very "male" - if you get what I mean. My husband had a great time though - drinking with them till 1am. I made excuses to leave at about 10pm and didn't see them again till breakfast.
One of the main reasons I don't like hosting these groups very much is breakfast.... generally when people stay here we have homemade bread, muffins, yoghurt, fruit, muesli etc. for breakfast. I find it easy to make and best of all requires only one or two plates per person. When Asian male groups come they make it quite clear that they would prefer rice.... which means preparing lots of little plates of things to go with it... which means zillions of dishes afterwards... This time I was too tired to do much though so cheated by using packet miso soup (which they raved about....) and of course as we have lots of eggs now made them fried eggs etc. What I find frustrating is the inability to go without things from your home country for 2 days.... (my family don't need to comment here... chocolate and nurofen are in a different category!) they all brought special chili sauce tube things with them and smothered them on everything they ate. They brought their bags full of Korean sake. They questioned why we didn't have any kimchi and weren't willing to even try Japanese seaweed. For me going to a new country means trying the new food and as they were only here for 2 days it wasn't as if they had to put up with it for too long.... Anyway, they seemed more than happy when they left - after having second helpings of eggs etc. they claimed they were full. Of course they managed to spill most of their soup on the cushions etc. and didn't bother to let me know, let alone apologize (apparently spilling things is very acceptable in their culture) so that was another lovely surprise waiting for me to clean up once I had taken them to their bus. It was nice for my husband to become the main entertainer for a while, but I was pretty happy to see them go.
We are in a bit of a different situation than most people who are part of the Green Tourism organisation in that we have a "guest cottage" for people to stay in. The majority of people just use a room in their house that they no longer need. For us it means that we have some time in the mornings as a family without having to tiptoe around trying not to wake up the guests. My friend Katy (who kindly described me as: "running a shelter for pregnant women and mothers of small babies") asked me how long I thought it would take to pay off the cottage and I told her I thought we already had. Of course financially we will probably never actually pay off the cottage with the money we get from Green Tourism... but to be honest that is not why we built it. We built it for family and friends to come and stay in for free and so far I think it has been really succesful for that purpose. But of course we don't have family and friends here every day of the year so we use the cottage for paying guests as well. I think as soon as we tried to make it into a business we would fail - as to be successful you need to be willing to let people into your home and be a part of your life - not just show them how to plant veges etc. It is stressful on our family and therefore having guests every day of the week is not an option. However the benefits far outweigh the stresses - my children really show pride in our area now and are so excited when they can show people around and teach them new things. They have gained confidence, an ability to make friends and an ability to work out how others are feeling and think of ways to make everyone included. These are skills that can't be taught in a classroom. My husband likes that we get proper meals.... So despite the stresses I think we will continue for a while yet.
Of course friends and family always get preference over paying guests in the cottage so just let me know when you are arriving and I'll pick you up at Usa station!