Peace and Tears

Over the weekend we had another group of junior high school girls come to stay. Although I thought my eardrums were going to explode the first few minutes after they arrived (they were shown into the cottage....) they soon calmed down and ended up being the best group of students we have had yet. I think it helped that my children weren't at school all day so they could play with them too. As well as the normal pizza making, muffin making, pavlova making, rotary hoeing, potato planting etc. we also managed to do some real "autumn" activities. There are plenty of chestnuts lying around at the moment to collect and of course peeling them always adds another half hour or so to the experience. It is peanut pulling time too so they did all that for me as well as carving themselves a pumpkin... not quite Halloween, but they really enjoyed it anyway. I have no idea how many photos they took, but they are all the same.... peace sign with different backgrounds!
We said goodbye to them on Sunday morning and they were all in tears... I was too tired to go that far, but it was definitely a nice group to have.
On Sunday afternoon we went to a friend's one year old party and discovered another use for peanuts.... peanut butter gets chewing gum out of hair!

Christmas is coming

Today felt like the first day in a long time that I didn't have to go to work and that I didn't have any children at home. To celebrate I finally got around to making this year's Christmas cake. For any of the Japanese readers... you are not misunderstanding the English - Christmas cakes in New Zealand are not simply sweet sponge cakes filled with piles of cream and decorated with strawberries, they are actually very heavy (mine is about 2.5kg) fruit cakes. 1.5kg of dried fruit, raisins etc., 6 eggs etc. are all mixed together and baked for about 3 and a half hours. For the best flavour they are supposed to be made well in advance, with some people making them as early as a year in advance. I figure 3 months is better than nothing... Roll on Christmas so we can eat it! And yes... after 12 years living here I did finally treat myself to a proper cake mixer this year. Heaven!

On Tuesday while I was at work our deck was also completed. It looks pretty good and just needs one more coat of paint - that will have to wait for a few more days though as another group of giggly junior high school girls will arrive tomorrow for 2 nights. Fun, fun, fun!

Autumn equinox

Everybody who has a blog about Japan is currently writing about the autumn equinox, which was yesterday. Here it is celebrated as a public holiday and is another time of the year when people clean and visit their graves. In our area it is also a time when the community gets together to pray for a good rice harvest (praying that the typhoons stay away.....). We have a tiny community center across the road from us and on this day one person from each household is supposed to go and take part in the festivities. Traditionally the men sat around and ate and drank while the woman rushed around cleaning, cooking and serving all the food before cleaning everything up while the men went up the hill to pray at the small shrine. Things have changed a bit now though and although the women are still responsible for the cleaning (oops... I had to work all day yesterday so couldn't help) the food is now supplied by the local restaurant and the trip up the mountain to the shrine consists of everyone sitting on their knees facing the general direction of the shrine and praying (most members of my community are too old to make it up the hill).
One thing that hasn't changed is the seating arrangements.... in Japan the people furthest from the kitchen are always the most important people (ie the oldest) and then the people get younger as you head towards the kitchen - of course all the men are before the women no matter what their age.....
Although the numbers participating in this ritual are decreasing each year as households die out, it is nice to see it continuing in a more modern form. I wonder when they will bring in the cleaning company too......

Busy day

Does anybody else have days where things are just so busy, but go so smoothly that at the end of it all you have a great sense of accomplishment? Today was one of those days for me. It started with the main event - a cooking classroom for 11 people. They were all people who had collected "stamps" by shopping at shops in Usa and they were cashing in their stamps to come and participate in a herb and NZ baking morning. Fortunately they paid me in cash, not stamps! It was a lot of fun and as well as the ooing and aaing over simple things like cheap cheese graters, can openers and garlic presses we managed to make 5 different things in 2 hours..... herbed french bread, herbed potato salad, basil pesto, citrus slice and pumpkin muffins. They went home laden with fresh basil, lemon grass and lemon verbena and seemed to have a great day.
30 minutes after they left a friend came over with her 2 children and we drunk copious quantities of coffee while the children raced around outside. Then 5 minutes after they left my English student arrived for her weekly lessons. Needless to say we went to the convenience store for tea tonight!
Tomorrow I'm off to KitaKyushu for the day to do a team building program for a group of ladies.... I can hardly wait!

Non event

One thing about living in Japan that is different from New Zealand is the weather forecasts. There is a "famous" story about my husband going to New Zealand for the first time and staring out the window at a beautiful blue sky at 3pm and asking where the rain was. Apparently he had seen on the forecast that it was due to rain at 3pm.... Of course for those who live in New Zealand you will know that forecasting there is never that accurate. However in Japan it is often very accurate - down to the minute in some cases. One thing they haven't managed to perfect though is the forecasting of typhoons. It is currently typhoon season here and we were due to be hit by a really bad one last night. This meant that I had to tidy up everything that could possibly be blown away outside in preparation. Phone lists were handed out at school to inform us of who we had to ring in the case of school being cancelled etc. and then.... the typhoon took off on a completely different route and missed us completely. We hardly even got a thimble full of rain. I guess at least the garden area was tidied up a bit and the almost completed deck managed to get its first layer of paint. Nothing like being forced into action!

Futagoji

When you go to a place more than once you notice new things each time. Today I went back to a temple called "Futagoji" to study it a little more before I take my father's group on a tour there in October. It is a really peaceful temple set in wonderful grounds with little surprises around each corner. The priest there is always willing to answer any stupid questions I might have and today I came up with yet another silly question... is there any significance to the frog statues that appear in different places around the temple grounds? There is a big stone frog outside the main temple entrance that people have stuffed money into and if you look carefully at the last picture here you will see there are some silly frogs having a shoulder ride on the left etc. To me they don't quite fit with the seriousness of the place, but I wanted to know why they were there. The answer..... the person who made all the other statues liked frogs and threw them in as a bonus. In other words no meaning at all - sometimes trying to put meaning to everything we see is not necessary!
One thing I find a little frustrating at the temples and shrines here is that each place seems to have their own explanation for things. Today the priest I was talking to came up with a good explanation for this - he said that it is easier to think in terms of a department store. The overall concept is the same everywhere, based on the basic concepts that were brought over from India and China many years ago, but that all of the individual temples are like the speciality stores within the department store. They each have their own take on things and adapt them to suit their own "customers", environment etc. No relation to frogs, but a reasonable explanation all the same!
I almost forgot to add that it poured on the last day of our deck making so we have an almost finished deck! I think the finishing touches should be made this weekend. Fingers crossed the approaching typhoon doesn't blow it over before then.

Deck day 2

It looks like it is going to be worth the wait. The majority of the cottage deck was completed today with just the finishing touches and painting left for tomorrow. It seem to be working out really well. We have put seating around two edges which also acts as a barrier so people don't fall off the edge and now we just have to decide whether to cut a hole for a plant or not.... tomorrow morning is decision day!
But for now I need to write a letter.... another of my son's teeth fell out today and despite the fact that it is much easier to throw the tooth under the floor (Japanese tradition) than write a letter to the tooth fairy the temptation of money won out again and now the tooth fairy needs to do her magic. How many teeth can two children possibly lose?

Decking at last?

We built our guest cottage over two years ago and since then we have been talking about making the deck for it - things move fast in our family! With my father due to come and visit again in October and my mother coming in December I finally gave my husband an ultimatum... the deck needs to be completed in September. Amazing as it may seem it looks like it might get done this long weekend. In order to help the process along I spent the last couple of days preparing the base for concreting tomorrow. The fact that it was over 30 degrees each day didn't make it fast progress, but I managed to dig and transport enough lawn/dirt to make it impossible to put it off any longer. Here's hoping the rain due tomorrow doesn't arrive and I can show you some more progress shots. Anybody who is in the neighbourhood is more than welcome to come and help - I'll even let you put your hand print in the concrete!

Countryside dwelling friends

Yesterday we went to a friend's house to play and ended up going on a really nice walk. They live in a very similar area to ours - surrounded by mountains and ricefields and where we went walking was full of shrines and temples too. There were even miniature shrine gates on huge rocks. It was great for the children to get out for a bit and get some exercise..... for the adults too! A really nice way to spend a Saturday. We havepromised to go back when it is a little cooler and climb the mountains rather than walking around them.

Grape growing

I am sitting here munching on some grapes. Unfortunately as they are Japanese grapes it means that I have to spit the skins out as I eat them and therefore have purple fingers....... When I first came to Japan I couldn't believe they spat the skins out, but now that I live here and eat the grapes I understand why. It is not because they are covered in chemicals (although that is probably true too) it is more because the skins are so hard and bitter that they need to be spat out in order to keep your digestive tract in good running order. I also find it interesting to see how they actually grow the grapes here. Every bunch is put into an individual paper bag from the time it first forms to protect it from any kind of harmful thing you can imagine. Often the grapes are then sold in that same bag - no sampling the merchandise first! Perhaps the labour intensiveness of it all is one of the reasons why they are so expensive.... lucky we have friends who keep us supplied!

By the way - I can't take credit for the grapes in a bag photo, but stole it off another blog. I discovered it by chance while searching for the photo and it has some other insights into Japan for anyone interested. The address is: Quirky Japan Blog

Celebrations

Today was the second last day of the school holidays. It has been a long month and a half! To celebrate making it through we all went to amusement park "Space World" in KitaKyushu to play with some aliens. The aliens obviously also visit the toilets there as the "English" written there doesn't make much sense to anyone else. For anyone who has ever visited Japan this probably doesn't surprise you very much, but it is something that still frustrates me. I appreciate that there are signs in English, but sometimes I really wish they would at least get the signs translated properly. Or perhaps this sign is just another illustration of the differences between American and British English?

It was the second time we have been to Space World - the first with Aunty Beth last year and the children enjoyed knowing the things they wanted to do and even managed to go on some different rides too. Being summer getting wet wasn't such a bad thing so the water rides were well used! As fun as it is I am glad it is only a yearly outing......

Reunion

Last year a lady who had lived in America for 2 years came to stay with her daughter for 2 nights. Since then my daughter has been exchanging letters with them and yesterday they came back for a second visit, this time with the father too. From the minute they arrived the three children had a wonderful time and despite having rain the whole time they managed to catch lots of tadpoles, admire my jumbo pumpkins, pick a watermelon, make pizza and salad and make their own shop, make their own fishing game, play monopoly and do a zillion initiative games. It was great to see them again - we look forward to seeing them again next year too!

Big Marching

For the fourth year in a row (and the last year!) we made our way to Oita City to watch the kindergarten marching group perform in a big marching festival. As always they did an amazing job in a huge stadium (one of the world cup soccer matches was held there so it is no small place) in front of a crowd of thousands. Of course the crowd is concentrated into one area, but still.... It is sometimes hard to remember that the children in this group are all between 4 and 6 years old. Here is a very shaky video which shows a little of what the group is doing and a lot of what my son is doing... It is very long and not so clear, so feel free to watch the first 10 seconds and turn it off! All the noise (aka music) is made by the children - drums, synthesiser etc. The teachers are only there to pick up the drum sticks when someone flings them with too much energy!

School weeding... again!

A lot of the things that happen here are annual events - this morning's efforts was one of them. It was the annual weeding of the school grounds. I can think of nothing I would rather be doing at 7am on a Sunday morning! For those of you who are new to this blog, please look at last year's entry for details - this year's weeding was exactly the same as last year's weeding! The link is: School Cleaning
Some schools are slowly starting to use grass for their grounds... unfortunately we live in a town that is definately not one of the first to try anything new. Maybe by the time my great grandchildren are born they will have a nice soft surface to run on!

Coincidences

On Friday night we had another family come to stay that was very similar to us in many, many ways. Firstly the husband came to Japan in 1996 as part of the JET scheme (a government run programme which places English teachers in schools all over Japan). I also came to Japan as part of the JET scheme in 1996. Although he only participated in the programme for one year he stayed on in Japan and met a Japanese lady, whom he married. They are now raising their daughter in America bilingually and they have just been here in Japan for 3 months to give her some extra Japanese - again it sounds very familiar (for those of you that don't know we did the same thing this year - going back to New Zealand for 3 months).
They were down this way because he is an anthropologist and is very interested in the history of this area. I'm hoping that we will be able to swap notes a bit later on and make a reasonable English brochure etc. about this area. Speaking of English... I have made a rough translation of our Japanese website so if anyone is interested in checking it out the address is: http://www.kdt.ne.jp/kiora/default.htm Then just click on the "English" button. I haven't had time to think too much about the content yet, but just for a taste....

Double Date

Before the start of the holidays my son had a day off kindergarten so I decided to give him a special day out - with just the two of us. He chose to go to the big aquarium about 50 minutes from here and we had a lovely time wandering around for hours - watching the sea elephants perform, getting splashed by the dolphins and of course seeing many, many fish. The fact that it was a Monday during the school term meant there weren't very many people there so we could take our time and look at literally ALL the fish in the place.
Of course if you do something like that for one child you then need to do something like that for your other child.... everything must be fair of course! So, today was my daughter's special day out and she could choose where we were going etc. Of course all things being fair she chose to also go to the aquarium. The only difference being it is now the school holidays, which means the place was packed. She still enjoyed it though - despite the fact that I didn't let her buy anything at the gift shop (which I finally realised was why she wanted to go there in the first place...). Aquariums are pretty similar all around the world, and although this one is nothing spectacular, they do have some fun shows and some interesting fish. But 2 times in less than a month is more than enough for me!

Bon Dancing

Last night the annual bon dancing was moved inside due to rain and although that meant it was easier to find a spot to sit down when you had had enough of going around and around it did mean that the lighting was brighter than when we do it outside. This of course means that everyone can see how bad you are at the dancing! For those who haven't heard of bon dancing before, the local communities get together at the end of the bon period and dance around in a huge circle for at least an hour to the beat of the drum and the singing/chanting of an old man. This is another way in which they farewell the ancestors whose spirits have come to visit at this time. You basically go around and around and around and around doing the same steps to the same beat until they change the songs and the beat and you then start doing those same steps to the same beat for another half hour or so.
There are less and less people who participate each year in our community and those who do come along often sit the dancing out until they see the little men come out with their big bags of dish washing sponges which have a number written on them (well that is what we have in our area!). All those who are dancing get one and at the end of the night they have a kind of lottery where you can win exciting prizes like gladwrap and dish washing powder. This year we had 8 sponges and all of them won prizes - 6 boxes of gladwrap and 2 boxes of washing powder!
As well as the fact that there are less and less people participating each year, there are also less and less people who are wearing the traditional yukata (summer kimono) to the event. As a point to any single men out there - if someone is wearing a kimono you don't need to search their fingers to see if they are married or not - just look at the length of the sleeves. If there is a big bit hanging down they are not married.... Just another piece of random, useless information for you!

For anyone interested in seeing what the dancing/drumming/droning is like here is a short video.

Returning to the graves

For the last 3 days the ancestors have been to visit. During their stay they are given offerings in the family altar and although the contents of these offerings seem to differ from region to region and even from house to house, according to my mother in law there are always 5 different plates of food given at our house (I need to take notes!). These 5 plates represent one of each of the basic elements of traditional Japanese meals - miso soup, pickles, beans, a "simmered dish" and of course rice. There is also an additional plate of rice cakes which the ancestors take back to their graves and a bowl of noodles, which represent the strings with which they will carry the rice cakes. During their stay these dishes remain in the altar and are removed as the ancestors are piggy backed back to the grave. The way to the grave is lit with candles and the rice cakes taken and given while praying for the safe return of the ancestors to the grave.
Coming from a country where we often don't even visit the graves of our ancestors more than a few times in our lives it is often hard for me to come to terms with the strong beliefs associated with the spirits etc. here. But, although it is different it is a special way to remember those who have died and we will welcome them all back again next year!